Pros: Gorgeous and stark landscapes, the real Mongolian actors, Soviet architecture
Cons: Perhaps: no decent ending. Some want a resolution.
The Bottom Line: See some of the last nomads on eart, not the cowboys and Indians, with cholera and measles in free blankets. No, Socialistic Soviet round-up of Mongolia, horrifyingly real.
Yes, the old coal-mining town in ex-Soviet Mongolia is horrendously grim, starkly set in a frozen environment. The yurts on the huge, empty plains surrounded by sheep and horses remind a viewer that this is the origin of so many Native Americans - in appearance and lifestyles. Why should someone seek out this startlingly realistic and downbeat film?
It is a beautiful and engrossing film, that is why. This 1996 film was made in -30F Mongolia by a team of German, Dutch and Belgium directors, to show how the sheepherding nomads were deliberately pushed off their land into the mining towns. The people have some modern living accountrements, such as radios, boots, Western clothing and fabrics, later bicycles and motorcycles, trucks and buses. One can see the Soviet impact on these people,who'd formally been left in peace alone on the steppes.
The main character is a young man, Bagi, who has epilepsy. This is interpreted as a shamanistic gift. The older shamaness of the village comes to the boy and tries to help him out of a freezing night's coma. That is the beginning of his long journey into understanding himself, his people, their shamanistic heritage, and the fight necessary to avoid losing their culture to the modern paycheck world.
Bagi and his family are rounded up by health authorities, transported by open truck to a mining town, and put to work, while living in typical Socialistic stacked-up cement blocks. Bagi is a mailman on a motorcycle, and he rescues a young coal thief, a rebel young lady. They band together with others, in the fight against this "Neues Leben" (as the Germans would say in old DDR).
Gorgeous scenery, freezing landscapes, symbolic scenes - all make for a mesmerizing film.
Don't foget to take a quick look at the extra bit on the DVD, showing the filming of the rescue of the coalthief.
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