Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Aktan Abdykalykov's (1998) film "Beshkempir" (which is the name of the protagonist and means "Five Grandmothers" in Kirghiz; the English-language title, "The Adopted Son," references an important plot element) has many very striking visual compositions, and considerable ethnographic interest (particularly about the responses to death in rural Kyrgyzstan, the village of Bar-Boulak to be precise). It does not have much plot and has fairly limited character development.

Being somewhat accustomed to focusing on unfamiliar cultural practices and striking visuals in films from the southern tier of republics that were uneasily subsumed in the former Soviet Union, the minimal plot and character development did not throw me. What did—a bit—was the shifts from very vibrant colors to black-and-white.

The film opens with a leisurely examination of some Kirghiz carpets. Color photography continues with an elaborate ceremony by women in head scarves to ward the Evil Eye off an infant boy. Most of the rest of the movie is in black-and-white. In the program notes for the Pacific Film Archives "Films from Along the Silk Road," Jonathan Rosenbaum claims that "Abdykalykov's sparing use of color [is] clearly a matter of aesthetic rather than financial reasons.... Every shift between these registers [color/black-and-white] is experienced as an epiphany, a bursting re-creation of the world." I am not convinced that lack of color film stock was uninvolved. My guess is that Abdykalykov had a small amount of color film stock and, like Eisenstein in "Ivan the Terrible," Part Two, chose how to use it. (How he chose to use it was intermittently, rather than for one scene, as Einstein did).

I don't see the short flashes of color as "epiphanies" (or re-creations of the world, or of my perception of color....). I am grateful that the landing of a Eurasian hoopoe (a bird with a very elaborate crest) was shot in color, but don't see it or a colorful purse floating in a mud puddle (or being handed some coins to go to the movies) as epiphanies. And what I do see as epiphanies Beshkempir learning of the death of the grandmother who lived in the household in which he grew up, learning that he was adopted (as an infant), and taking the role of presiding over the funeral of the grandmother who designated him as her heir are shot in black-and-white.

So much for the meaning of black-and-white. After the blessing/protection ritual, the film shifts to black-and-white, as the boy (Abdykalykov's son Mirlan played Beshkempir) and his friends are coating themselves with mud. This turns out to be protection for invading a beehive. There is a lot of mud in the movie, including a de facto demonstration of making mud bricks. And there is an outdoor movie screening that shows the primitive technology (and odd products) that are cinema in rural Kyrgyzstan. Plus a protracted shearing of the sides of Beshkempir's scalp (leaving the hair on top long), and protracted shots of people walking toward or away from the camera. (Unlike in Sergei Paradjanov's "Color of Pomegranates", the camera does pan, though I don't recall any tracking shots.

There is also a very obese woman stripped to the waist, applying leeches (I wanted to tell her that they drank blood, not fat...) spied on by the boys. They make and then mount an effigy of a naked woman, jostle (and de-pants) each other. Beshkempir is the best fighter, and after winning a fight with one of the other boys, the loser strikes back by saying that Beshkempir was a foundling.

Beshkempir's mother tells him that he is "flesh of my flesh," but the other boy persists and that boy's mother refuses to curb him, saying that what he says is only the truth. More fights lead to the other boy's mother complaining that Beshkempir has beaten up her son, his father striking him, his mother leaping between them, Beshkempir running away.

He becomes a junior fisherman. Someone from his village finds him and tells him his grandmother is dying and is holding on in hopes of seeing and blessing him. This leads to what plot and character development there is, so I will not relate more of the contents, but will note that the very end is back in vivid color, showing more carpets. "When Abdykalykov was asked [at one of the many film festivals that gave the movie awards] what motivated the eccentric construction, he replied that it was inspired by the way rugs in Kyrgyzstan are woven and patched together."

The junior Abdykalykov is affecting as the boy whose assumptions about his place in the world are suddenly undermined—and just when the hormones are surging. Some of the visual compositions (especially silver rivers) are very striking, and I did not feel that the 76 minutes I spent watching the film were wasted. It is not entertaining Hollywood style, but one does not choose to watch a film from Kyrygyzstan expecting such a style.

The movie is remarkably devoid of sentimentality (which is not to say that the characters lack feelings and that these are visible!). Especially the first half—in which the youth seem to exist in a world of peers without attention or interference from adults—, it reminded me of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "The Boys From Fengkuei" (1983). That also has a grandmother dying, though with total neglect that stands in marked contrast to Beshkempir's grandmother's demise. (Fellini's "Amarcord" also comes to mind in that the boys are younger than the aimless youths in "I vitelloni.") It is like Paradjanov movies about Armenian, Georgian, and Ukrainian heritages in providing vivid images, minimal plot, and implicit nationalism (resurgent after breaking away from decades of Russian domination within the USSR).

The movie was the first feature film not only of writer-director Aktan Abdykalykov, but was the first post-Soviet feature film produced in Kyrgyzstan. If you don't know where Kyrgyzstan is, it is a Central Asian republic (about the size of Minnesota), bordered by China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The population is mostly of Mongol descent and Sunni Muslim.

The only DVD extra is a page of awards the film received. The subtitles are easy to read and in almost completely grammatical English. The container and advertising claims that there is a trailer, but none is apparent in the disc's menu.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older