I liked “Borat”
(there, I said it). Because of that, my expectations were probably tempered in
a very strange way. “Tulpan” is
decidedly a far-cry from the hirsute TV journalist, as comparatively unoriginal as it may seem.
What makes this Kazakh coming-of-age tale so great is the
fact that it is the product of minds that refuse to recognize the pretenses of
the romance, nostalgia and fantasy that is so typical of western cultural motifs.
It takes the tired-but-true dilemma of a young man named Asa
(yearning for more than this provincial life), returning to the wind-swept plains of his forebears to live with his
sister’s family, and invigorates it with a sense of grandeur and gritty
nonchalance.
After sampling a taste for a faster life in the Russian Navy
(for which he regales his few neighbors with stories of exotica like killer
octopi), his rejection at the hands of Tulpan—the only other marriageable
female on the Kirghiz Steppe—comes
as a harsh blow.
What follows is his fight to combat monotony, paternalism
and quiet desperation. And with constant reminders of what he’s missing in the
big cities oozing from each big-breasted pin-up tagged to the cab of his friend
Boni’s tractor, not to mention the patronizing tutelage of his sister’s sheep
herder husband, the comic nature of his struggle is more heart-warming than
crushing.
Fiction, though it is, moments like the delivery of
stillborn sheep or mother-daughter folk duets by candlelight strike something
deep within us. A cord both primal and modern, familiar yet strange, the
feelings bring to mind Kurosawa’s naturalist epic “Dersu Uzala”.
The ruggedness of the land and its people are simply there. At times the movie itself becomes virtually
indistinguishable from a National Geographic documentary. The distinction is
rarely an issue, however, because it’s not pandering to urban elites or
cinephiles. It’s not a circus curiosity at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, to be
gawked and fawned over. It’s simple.
Unsentimental. And that makes it one of the most unadulterated examinations of
tradition and family that I’ve ever seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment