Tulpan

Investing the ethnographic documentary with sly wit and wry absurdity, Sergei Dvortsevoy’s Tulpan is a quiet revelation. Amidst the scouring sands of a Kazakh desert, a young man, Askhat (Askhat Kuchencherekov), searches for a wife and a flock. This is no easy task when he shares a crowded yurt with his sister Samal (Samal Esljamova) and her irritable husband Ondas (Ondas Besikbasov), and the only woman for miles around is the elusive Tulpan. Sitting behind a curtain with a veil pulled tight across her face, Tulpan is a stony symbol of implacability with no interest in her hapless suitor.

Unfolding in glacial takes, Dvortsevoy’s film has an observant, anthropological edge. Life in the desert is bitter – a cycle of struggle in which survival is a cruel victory. The pace and nature of this life are superbly studied in a series of wide, wide, wide-angled shots, in which the foregrounded ‘action’ – the grazing of sheep, the excited games of children – hints at a totality of nature that exists around and beyond the frame.

But it’s no mere museum piece. Though beset by financial and technical troubles during production (not least because of the remote location shoot), the fates finally shone on Dvortsevoy while his camera was rolling. Happy accidents give the film a surrealist air – two donkeys charge into frame to mate; a concerned camel stalks the makeshift ambulance that’s carrying her son. In that sense, Tulpan is a glorious patchwork, a synthesis of ‘found’ film and careful construction that moves smoothly from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Natural performances add to the realism, and though the cast are largely non-professional, Dvortsevoy has the confidence to shoot a series of striking and sensitive close-ups amidst the panoramas. For all that life on the steppe is harsh, it is also intimate, as a delicate scene in which the family comb each other’s hair shows. Special mention deserves to go to Bereke Turganbayev as a tractor driver obsessed with Boney M’s ‘Rivers of Babylon’. Despite owning the only form of motorised transport for miles, it is that song, rather than the machine itself, that symbolises the poignant, impossible dream of escape.

And yet Askhat will abide – because that is what life demands, and those demands must be answered. In the film’s most memorable scene, Askhat helps a sheep give birth over a single, 10-minute take. Beyond metaphor and meditation, this scene is a profoundly simple statement about the facts of life in the desert. There may not be much place for hope, but there is an austere kind of beauty, if you’re prepared to look.

Matt Bochenski

Anticipation:

An exotically alien culture is given a voice. Let’s hope it has something to say.

Enjoyment:

Not just a worthy trawl through foreign experiences, but a sensitive and often quite funny human drama.

In Retrospect:

A Herculean task from the director and one that deserves to find an audience.