TULPAN
Directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy
Produced by Karl Baumgartner
Written by Dvortsevoy & Gennady Ostrovskiy
Released by Zeitgeist Films
Kazakh & Russian with English subtitles
USA. 91 min. Not Rated
With Askhat Kuchinchirekov, Samal Yeslyamova, Ondasyn Besikbasov & Tulepbergen Baisakalov
 

Life on the harsh steppes of Central Asia seems to make women stubborn and men dreamers, at least as recently seen in the movies. Sergey Dvortsevoy sets Tulpan in his native Kazakhstan, but it is almost a mirror image from the man’s point of view in Wang Quan An’s Tuya’s Marriage, set over 2,000 miles away in China’s Inner Mongolia. Both open with almost the same ritual marriage negotiations between shepherds in their round yurt.

But Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov) is probably an atypical young suitor for the hand of Tulpan. He has come back from the Russian Navy to tell tales of the wonders of the ocean deep—and to settle down. He has big dreams of how he can modernize traditional herding of sheep and camels. But all that Tulpan can focus on are his big ears. Rejected, he returns in defeat to the crowded yurt of his devoted sister, her brusque husband, who resents housing and supervising his brother-in-law, and his two nephews, who adore their uncle.

Asa wants to become a tenant shepherd, but the local boss denies him a flock of sheep of his own: “No wife, no flock,” and Tulpan’s impassive mother finally screams the equivalent of “No flock, no wife.” Meanwhile, his optimistic best friend keeps needling him to move to the city, where jobs, apartments, and pornography will surely be more available. But frustrated Asa cannot shake his dream, which all seems to come down to convincing Tulpan to marry him. After all, she’s the last marriageable woman within a day’s drive.

This is Dvortsevoy’s first fictional feature after making documentaries, but the Mongolian docudramas of Byambasuren Davaa (The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Cave of the Yellow Dog) provide more ethnographic information on the daily lives of nomads, particularly of the children. The cast are urban Kazakh actors who had to learn the nomadic skills for their parts, so Asa’s shock and delight at the birth of a lamb are the actor’s reflexive reaction. However, nature is more dramatic here, from the endless, flat horizon (filmed in Kazakhstan’s Betpak Dala, translated as the Hunger Steppe) to raging sand funnels.

While scenes recall classic Westerns that celebrated American pioneers on the prairie, Dvortsevoy poignantly captures a society at the very hinge of change, where the beauty of the rugged environment and the pride of fulfilling traditions have to compete with the pull of the city.  A way of life looks sure to disappear through the very personal decisions made by the quixotic Asa and the barely glimpsed Tulpan. Nora Lee Mandel
April 1, 2009