Issue 65 (2019) |
Emir Baigazin: The River (Ozen, 2018) reviewed by Birgit Beumers © 2019 |
Emir Baigazin’s final film in the trilogy about the teenager Aslan—following Harmony Lessons (Uroki garmonii, 2013) and The Wounded Angel (Ranenyi angel, 2016)—premiered at the Venice International Film Festival 2018 in the Orrizonti section, where Baigazin promptly received the Best Director award.
The River is maybe the most minimalist film in the trilogy, scripted, filmed and edited by Baigazin, where the previous films were shot by the cinematographers Aziz Zhambakiev and Yves Cape respectively (with Zhambakiev winning the Silver Bear for Best Cinematography for his work on Harmony Lessons). Indeed, the cinematography once again has a striking quality, emphasizing the contrast between closed and open, interior and exterior spaces as it dwells on frames of doors and windows that open onto the vastness of the steppe that contrasts with the sparsely furbished house. In The River this function of frames is taken a step further: “Baigazin frames the individual brothers in doorways and window frames. They are placed in buildings and deserts like chess pieces on a board, forming patterns and shapes that often make the film feel like a modern dance piece” (Hunter 2018).
On the one hand, frames and doors are an extension of other enclosures. The interplay of the house and the outside courtyard, encircled by broken fences and dysfunctional gates demarcate the steppe out and beyond the house. All the time the boys are busy building what first seems to be a wall, and only later in the film turns out to be a barn. The house itself serves as an enclosure for sleep, food and learning (reading). The boys occasionally sit before the windows but rarely peer into the distance; occasionally we see them in the window frame from the outside. The frames thus offer no view into the house or a clear view onto the outside world: windows separate and isolate spaces. The mother never leaves the house: her role is exclusively in the house, and often she is not even fully within the (camera) frame. The film starts with Aslan talking to his mother about the river, which the father has shown to him—the eldest son—, whom he leaves in charge of the farm and the younger siblings when he goes to the town. A female voice responds to Aslan’s fascination with the river, his fear of the currents and his belief in the myth that the river grants wishes. Only once she has spoken, the figure of the mother enters the frame from behind the open door, into the focus of the camera and into the doorframe. All the time, Aslan has been sitting on a chair facing the camera and facing the doorframe, with his back to the wall and the two windows either side of the table behind him. This is one of few occasions when Aslan faces the camera; usually he is seen with his back to the camera, bent over a book on the table before the wall and between the two windows, deliberately barring him from a view outwards. Indeed, Baigazin demonstrates “his growing reputation as a visual craftsman of uncommon discipline and expressivity” (Rooney 2018).
On the other hand, the frames appear to have another function: they enhance the cinematographer’s technique of framing the characters in static poses before setting them in motion, as suggested by the above reference (Hunter 2018) to a dance piece. Indeed, once the characters move, they seem to follow a ballet score before freezing again in another pose. This technique suggests the stagnation of the flow of time: unlike the river that flows and signifies movement, life on the land is marked by stasis, and only occasional, short “scenes” or episodes of movement. The boys are, as it were, animated and compelled to move by the presence of the camera. And they move only according to the prompts of the director/father of this artificial world.
The enclosure represented by the house suggests isolation; the broken fence demarcates the territory that belongs to this family of mother, father and their five sons: the eldest, Aslan; the twins Yerlan and Turlan; the boy Murat; and the little brother Kenzhe. They live on a farm that stands alone in the middle of nowhere, without a village or an aul anywhere in sight. Only the father uses the motorbike to visit the nearby town or village to sell the bread which the mother bakes, and apparently other produce. They keep a lone goat that grazes somewhere in the steppe, attached to a pole; and they grow vegetables in a patch of garden protected from the scorching sun with a piece of canvas and in need of regular watering. While the father is away, Aslan is in charge of the siblings: the twins have to make bricks from clay and straw, which they need to make a wall for a barn. As emerges later, this task is a punishment, because the original barn burnt down after the twins smoked a cigarette nearby and carelessly threw away the stub.
Aslan is instructed by the father to teach his siblings to read; to manage the farm (goat, vegetables); and to supervise the brick-making work of the twins. However, Aslan is considerate where the father is strict and authoritarian, beating the twins after they failed to do their work. The father is sparse with words, and only once talks with the mother about the need to keep the children away from the dangers of the modern world. He shows the river only to Aslan; once he takes the smallest boy to the village with him to make him denounce the siblings; the television set is broken (presumably deliberately); and the way of life is ascetic. The boys wear shirts and trousers made from sackcloth or linen and canvas slippers, while the mother wears a white dress; only the father wears a shirt with a vest, trousers and shoes.
The father isolates the children from the modern world: that evil world of the village school where Aslan was exposed to bullying in Harmony Lesson, and of the Happylon game and entertainment park where he finds no fulfillment of his dreams. In The River, Aslan does not seek to break away from this ascetic way of life and obeys his father, although he is kinder and protective of the siblings, defending them against the father’s rigid regime of beatings. Thus, he keeps to himself the incident with the barn and other occasions where the children have failed the father’s orders; on another occasion, he begs the father to give the brothers a break during the heat of the day; and he takes the boys to the river. Indeed, the father’s reign over the family is absolute: he tolerates no contradiction. “The River (Ozen) is a quietly mesmerising tale of oppression, liberation and a loss of innocence” where the father’s desire “to protect them [the children] from the wider world look[s] more like a prison than a sanctuary” (Hunter 2018).
The father’s world of isolation and patriarchal rule amounts to exploitation and appears like a microcosm for society. However, that reading fails to suggest rebellion or resistance, when we look at the young generation, where Aslan has to learn to become a man, as his father puts it, by being submissive and meek towards him, and strict with the siblings. Nevertheless, Aslan introduces an element of joy into the life of the children by allowing them to play games of hide-and-seek, or pretending to shoot each other with makeshift pistols made from sticks; one day he takes them beyond the broken fence, through the steppe, to the wide river. First they look at the river and its currents, and at the other bank; dangerous currents make it impossible to swim across the river. The boys (except for Kenzhe, who is too little to swim) float with the current and play in the water, enjoying the time without domestic chores while their father is away. Then, suddenly, the daily routine of patriarchal order and its respites is interrupted.
One day, a boy from the city comes to the farm. His name is Kanat, he is dressed like a stranger (if not an alien) in short khaki trousers, bright yellow socks, sneakers, a silvery metallic jacket and a straw hat and sunglasses, carrying a backpack. He also has with him a tablet on which he is playing a game, equipped with a GPS system that allegedly guided him to the farm. One by one, the boys gather around Kanat as he sits on a stack of wood: first they watch him play, then they borrow the gadget and play: work over, game on. They soon go inside the house and start playing cards to establish who will use the tablet next, and who will get or buy the tablet from Kanat. “Market” demand for the tablet takes control over the family life. In the meantime, Kanat fixes the aerial and reconnects the television set, which now brings a flow of (irrelevant) news reports into the house and reconnects the family to the broader, global context. Whilst the acoustic sphere of the family changes, the continuous flow of words from the television and sounds from the video game have little impact: they are a backdrop to the flow of life—work, eat, sleep—as inadequate for the family as the ability to read, with the siblings relying on Aslan to teach them and read to them.
Kanat represents the modern world and its temptation, but more significantly, he represents a real threat to Aslan’s authority. Realizing the weakness of his control (of which the father accuses him, but which gains him the siblings’ trust and confidence) Aslan sees Kanat as a rival. And so they all go to the river: it grants wishes, as the mother told Aslan, and Aslan told his siblings. As Rooney remarks: “Several times it’s been suggested that the river grants wishes, which plants the idea that Aslan may have made some dark private pact to regain control” (Rooney 2018). Indeed, Aslan’s wish becomes true: Kanat suggests to the boys to swim across the river to the other bank—where the river is less a reference to Styx as a divide to the “other” world, but to a natural border to the wider world. With sufficient physical training and bravery, it is possible to cross the river, but the boys refrain, aware and fearful of the danger. When Kanat perishes, they wait for the body to float up, but eventually—scared that the father will find out about their stay at the river—they burn Kanat’s things and return home, pretending that Kanat has gone home, leaving the tablet behind. After a few days, little Kenzhe tells the father on a trip to town that Kanat drowned, but without betraying that they burnt his clothes. In an attempt to reassert his authority, Aslan tells the siblings one by one about all their sins, misdemeanors and mistakes they confided in him without, however, denouncing them to the father. The siblings start to work better, and the father praises Aslan for having become “a man.” Yet Aslan feels guilty for Kanat’s death, believing that the river has granted his wish. The film thus shows how legends stifle the individual, inflicting unnecessary guilt for a murder upon Aslan, a murder that neither happened, nor was it caused by a curse. Kanat returns to the farm. He had dived and swan across the river, where he found shelter in a cabin with a hunter who gave him new clothes. Kanat collects his tablet and returns to the town. The mirage of the “alien” invader disappears, the status quo is re-established, and the boys move freely by the riverbank in a beautiful dance-like choreography performed with the elements of sun and air. The river is once again their friend, a site for relaxation and enjoyment, yet without jumping into the water.
The stagnation of life is captured by static and composed frames that transform into choreographed movement and slow motion sequences. The lack of movement emphasizes the inward-looking way of life that prevents the children from gaining a perspective and that distorts Aslan’s vision of the river. Indeed, the river never features from source to mouth, but as a border between two banks, with currents that inspire fear—even though the fear is man-made, as we have seen in the instance of Kanat: with initiative and fitness the border can be crossed without bringing about death. Baigazin’s choreographed movements, used to capture the enjoyment as much as the work, do not distinguish between forced and free movement until the final scene of the dance on the riverbank. In this sense, the film offers no microcosm for a patriarchal or authoritarian society, but a metaphor for the stagnation of time that offers no flow from past to future. The fear to move into any direction, outward and forward, or beyond the river, resides within the character and freezes the present in an empty space.
Birgit Beumers
| Comment on this article on Facebook |
Works Cited
Hunter, Allan. 2018. “'The River': Venice Review.” Screen Daily, 4 September
Rooney, David. 2018. “'The River' ('Ozen'): Film Review / Venice 2018.” The Hollywood Reporter 4 September.
The River, Kazakhstan, Poland, Norway, 2018
Languages: Kazakh, Russian
Color, 108 min.
Director, Scriptwriter, DoP: Emir Baigazin
Editor: Emir Baigazin
Music: Justyna Banaszczyk
Sound: Daut Zhantasov
Production Designer: Sergei Kopylov
Costume Designer: Aidana Kozhageldina
Cast: Zhalgas Klanov, Kuandyk Kystykbayev, Aida Iliyaskyzy, Eric Tazabekov, Zhasulan Userbayev, Ruslan Userbayev, Bagdaulet Sagindikov, Sultanali Zhaksybek,
Production: Emir Baigazin Production, Madants, Norsk Filmproduksjon, Ludmila Cvikova C&P
Producers: Emir Baigazin, Klaudia Smieja, Hilde Berg, Ludmila Cvikova
International sales: Films Boutique
Premiere: 3 September 2018 (Venice)
Emir Baigazin: The River (Ozen, 2018) reviewed by Birgit Beumers © 2019 |