Sergey Dvortsevoy, 2009, Kazakhstan/Russia, 100 mins
Cast: Askhat Kuchinchirekov, Samal Yeslyamova, Ondasyn Besikbasov
Review by Mike Bartlett
The decade began with one eye-opening portrait of an isolated community – the now forgotten Inuit drama Atanarjuat:The Fast Runner (2000) – and now it's ending with another – Sergey Dvortsevoy's account of life on the Kazakh steppes. It's a culture of nomadic farming that is in danger of disappearing, yet stretches right across Central Asia and is much the same in far-off Mongolia . The director, a former documentarist, was so keen to capture its authenticity that he based his cast and crew there for over a year and forced his actors to live as a family for a month before shooting started.
The story itself centres round Asa, a young man discharged from the navy, who returns to the home of his sister and her shepherd husband. To obtain his own flock of sheep, Asa must get married and he sets his sights on the only local beauty around – but she is less than enthusiastic... It's a slim premise for a film but it acts as an efficient thread around which Dvortsevoy can weave his vignettes of the everyday life in that environment.
And it's hard to recall from recent memory any film that has such a physical impact on the viewer. The sound design is incredible: as a storm whips up, the wind feels like it's coming from behind and round the camera, almost swirling by your side in the movie theatre. The eye is scorched by visual epiphanies, like a dog casually munching on a bone while lightning streaks down towards the horizon. Animals and children are omnipresent and, unusually, given as equal weight as the adult characters. Their unpredictable nature is allowed to run riot – the kids bawl and shriek and run over to stage left, the livestock nudge actors' faces and go where they will. Instead of making them adapt to camera, Dvortsevoy pushes his cinematographer to let them determine the flow of the scene.
And then there are the sheep births. Anyone at all squeamish should avoid this film, as should those who see animals as little, fluffy bundles and not mucky, solid beasts whose relationship with the farmer is as intimate as it is matter-of-fact. Two actors deliver lambs during the course of the movie and both occasions involve the creature being given artificial respiration. And Dvortsevoy insisted on the real thing, so it's one take in real time. By the end, the characters' relief onscreen is matched by that of the audience. Sean Penn never had to do this for an Oscar.
Tulpan may be from a distant corner of the world but its concern over the de cline of rural communities is now being reflected in many films on the international circuit – think of Raymond Depardon's Modern Life or the recent British film sleep furiously . Arguably, never before has the notoriously urban-centric medium of cinema been so preoccupied with life in the sticks. Here it's the old story of the lure of the city and its well-paid jobs denuding the country of its youth. Asa is torn but eventually chooses the plains rather than the streets. So that, if Tulpan manages to raise anything more than ethnographic interest, it might be seen as the first revolutionary cheer on behalf of nature, family and tradition. Which, in Dvortsevoy's hands, become revelatory in their sense of freedom. |
.jpg)
