The Owners

 

Director Adilkhan Yerzhanov

THE OWNERS           B-                     

Kazakhstan  (93 mi)  2014  d:  Adilkhan Yerzhanov

 

A portrait of miserablism, poverty and gloom, as seen through a surrealist lens where tragedy and dark comedy intersect, where it’s worth noting that the remote nation of Kazakhstan, known as one of the least densely populated nations on earth (only Canada and Australia are lower) with less than 15 people per square mile, yet it has produced two of the most weirdly unusual films to hit film festivals in the past two years, with this coming after Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (Uroki garmonii) (2013), one of the best directed and edited films from last year.  Both are young directors that have graduated from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts, so New Kazakh cinema has become a breeding ground of originality and novelty.  Actually THE OWNERS is a follow-up to his previous film, the 67-minute black and white short film CONSTRUCTORS (2013) Constructors | Stroiteli | FIFF | Fribourg International Film ..., shooting in wildly exaggerated colors, where both are low-key, absurdist treatments of the difficulties encountered by individuals that strive to maintain any sense of dignity when they are swallowed up whole by the apathy and indifference of a Kafkaesque Eastern European bureaucracy that may as well be the remnants of a Stalinist Soviet system left behind, as Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  While the overall effect is a bit like Kaurismäki, with similar deadpan acting, but it’s not Kaurismäki, leaving something to be desired, namely the wit and zany characters that inhabit a Kaurismäki film.  It may be closer in tone to the Yorgos Lanthimos film DOGTOOTH (2009), though stylistically quite different, as both are interested in creating a weird and entirely unusual universe that seemingly exists on its own, as if floating on air, where much of it carries a fantasy oriented atmosphere of surrealist caricature.       

Our three orphaned protagonists are introduced by a child’s drawing where we see 25-year old John (Aidyn Sakhaman), the reluctant patriarch, an ex-con who has done time for petty crimes and remains unemployed, his younger teenage brother Yerbol (Yerbolat Yerzhan), a handsome aspiring actor who retains his sense of idealism, and their sickly 12-year old epileptic sister Aliya (Aliya Zainalova) who remains the most innocent of all, where the two younger actors reprise their roles from CONSTRUCTORS.  Aliya continually sees the world through a kind of magical realism where people are always smiling and happy, often seen performing dance routines, where this whimsical element is a stark contrast to the gloom that inhabits the rest of the picture.  Forced to leave the city when they can no longer pay the rent, they move to a remote village where their deceased mother left them a house, carrying the deed to the property with them.  Unfortunately it’s currently inhabited by Zhuba (Bauyrzhan Kaptagai), the alcoholic brute of a brother to the local police chief (Nurbek Mukushev) who has been living there illegally for the past 10 years.  In this lawless frontier, possession takes precedence over any existing laws, as Zhuba wages an intimidation campaign and beats the crap out of John after he files a complaint with the police, while a visit to the housing ministry only results in the futility of trying to do anything about it, reduced to a portrait of comic absurdity, a throwback to a faceless and heartless Kafkaesque world where reason never prevails, where grievances remain in a state of limbo for months and problems are left to be resolved by hand-to-hand human combat, resorting to a survival of the fittest Darwinian universe where the weak are stomped on by more powerful Stalinist forces.  It’s a bleak and hopeless existence where John eventually gets arrested, where despite the dubious nature of the charges, there are signs that he will never be released, and the younger siblings are forced to survive on their own, where all that is saving them at the moment are Aliya’s charmingly innocent visions.

Duped into signing away ownership of the house, lured by the false promise of John’s freedom, the director likes to line up all the interested parties and shoot them in a tableaux shot where once again they are seen as just actors, where this offers a temporary relief from the descent into oblivion facing this family.  Perhaps part of the problem with this film is a similar one depicted in Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012), where the collaborators and perpetrators of the heinous acts of genocide are seen as mere caricatures, lending a cartoonish aura of ridiculousness to their nature that not only influences but overshadows whatever horrors they committed.  This exaggerated comical absurdity overwhelms the grotesque nature of their crimes, where the artificiality of style, expressed through extreme violence and Hollywood dreamlike dance sequences with saturated colors, allows them to portray themselves as fools, where they may hide and take cover within the mysterious ambiguities of artistic presentation, where fiction is as distorted as reality.  The heartlessness of a Stalinist regime is prevalent in both Kazakh and Russian films, where the stone cold rigidity of the system remains intact, even under the authority of a different nationality.  Yerzhanov then abandons any concept of realism and prefers to emphasize the darker more satiric elements of a Kafkaesque society, but in doing so the film makes so many tonal shifts that he loses any visionary claim to authenticity and begins referencing the stylizations of others, from early Kaurismäki to Fellini to Tsai Ming-liang to the comic invention of Wes Anderson, where there’s even a tribute to SCARFACE (1983) and Vincent van Gogh.  While the film never seems to work, the fun is watching it stumble all over itself with clever ideas it really doesn’t know what to do with.  Yerzhanov’s picture of an absurdly decaying system of authority is saturated in an unreal universe that becomes almost too magical, where there is no question that it is a compelling style, but it grows much too absurd.  Does the artistic style of the film equate to emotional truths or human drama, or does it provoke ideas or complex thought?  And while it’s visually quite strong and startlingly unique, there’s some question whether it actually offers anything new.    

Harmony Lessons (Uroki garmonii)

HARMONY LESSONS (Uroki garmonii)        B+                  

Kazakhstan  France  Germany  (115 mi)  2013  d:  Emir Baigazin          Website

Much in the same vein as other darkly disturbing films that expose the deadly effects of systematic violence and corruption, like the Mexican film Heli (2013) or the Russian film The Major (Mayor) (2013), all are brutal films that unleash a horrific price on what are otherwise innocent bystanders who happen to be pulled into this viciously dirty business.  While there don’t seem to be as many mafia movies these days, in their place are a multitude of films about swarming gangs of thugs that control a highly specialized marketplace, as they’re each one a loose commentary on black market capitalism that lives by its own rules, like the Wild West, answering to no law but their own.  Each one survives by inflicting enormous violence, which generates an accompanying fear associated with it, allowing them to continue to operate with impunity.  Until another gang moves in that’s bigger or stronger, they each feed, like vultures on a carcass, within their own established turf.  What could be more localized than the rural regions of Kazakhstan?  Beautifully set in a landscape of mountains and snow, where a vast emptiness seems to dwarf the inhabitants living in the small town, the harshness of survival in these lonely outskirts is expressed early on when young 13-year old Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov, who was discovered in an orphanage) first has to catch a slippery sheep and then slaughter and skin it under the supervision of his grandmother.  Written, directed, and edited by this first time director, he already exhibits a mature style, making a strikingly realist film with nonprofessional actors, yet he uses an interesting technique of skipping past major incidents, where we only learn what happens by the repercussions afterwards, leaving much of what happens in a permanent state of ambiguity. 

Aslan is a quiet and studious farm kid that keeps pretty much to himself, having few social skills and no friends, the kind of kid that doesn’t speak unless spoken to, where he takes his schoolwork seriously and seems to have a talent for science, where he collects cockroaches, tying them on strings and feeding them to his lizards living in a fishbowl, while at the same time he’s learning about survival of the fittest from Darwinism.  When they teach him electricity, he concocts his own tiny electric chair and fries a poor unfortunate roach.  But his reserved, anti-social behavior makes him a popular target for schoolyard bullies, who are little more than extortion artists led by the lead thug Bolat (Aslan Anarbayev), threatening to beat up anyone who is seen talking or befriending Aslan, who quickly becomes isolated and even more of a social outcast.  We soon learn Bolat collects money from lower classmen, which is then handed over to upper classmen, who are in turn extorted by local gangsters, where the money is used to support their members in prison.  This social hierarchy is thoroughly in place, where anyone who doesn’t play by the rules gets attacked and beat up by several of Bolat’s sidekicks.  Another kid that recently moved from the city, Mirsayan (Mukhtar Andassov), isn’t really afraid to stand up to bullies, as he’s not impressed, but he takes his lumps.  There’s also a side story about an attractive young Muslim girl, Akzhan (Anelya Adilbekova), who insists upon wearing a headscarf, even in gym class, as otherwise boys spend too much time leering at her, actions that she feels violates the Koran.  She wants nothing to do with stirring up that kind of desecrating behavior, even though the school officials urge her to remove it.  One of the more curious moments finds Aslan spying on her when she’s performing a modern dance routine, which may all be happening inside his head.     

There’s constant head-butting against authority in this film, as teachers are quick to lecture kids who challenge their authority, which means they’re not listening to the concerns raised by the kids, who often provide them with information they need to hear, but instead they get punished for it.  Similarly, if they go against the grain with Bolat, they’ll be brutalized for anything outside the norm.  Meanwhile both Mirsayan and Aslan have aspirations to defy Bolat, choosing different methods, where Mirsayan is willing to fight him one on one, while Aslan resorts to more devious means.  When Bolat is found dead, an act we never see, they are the prime suspects, where the police instantly fill the void of the schoolyard brutalizers, literally torturing the two kids to force them to talk, but both insist they had nothing to do with it, even after extensive beatings.  At one point one of the cops turns to the other asking what if they’re telling the truth?  But they quickly put those thoughts aside, as they’re paid to get the results the commander is looking for.  Every level of society is bullying whoever is directly below them on the food chain, creating a horrific picture of rampant corruption and brutality in the education, police, and criminal justice systems, where Mirsayan and Aslan are their current victims.  Because the film is told in such a realist style, it comes as a complete surprise when the director uses dream states for Aslan, which only becomes evident by the out-of-character events unfolding, expressed through an exaggerated state of mind.  This method is even more effective by leaving out so much of the significant material, where the audience and the police are only privy to theories and unproven allegations, relying instead upon motive and established character traits, yet it remains something of an elusive puzzle for everyone to comprehend.  Bolat and his gang could only operate with teachers continually turning a blind eye, while the police and their henchmen brutalize suspects with no community oversight.  In this manner, the police have no established credibility with the audience, as we’re not likely to believe their questionable results, leaving the finale in a mysterious state of psychological disbelief, where truth is often difficult to obtain, clouded by the murky methods of operation.  The cinematography by Aziz Zhambakiyev is often stunning, giving the film a grimly poetic yet continually gripping feeling of austerity and despair.