I had no idea what to expect from "Tulpan". I can't recall where in my movie trolling I'd decided to rent and watch it. Would it be one of those small, eccentric films with a quirky character in the lead? Those can work but I've been a little leery of them lately. The writer/director, Sergei Dvortsevoy, who is 47, is from Kazakhstan where Tulpan is set and has been involved in a half dozen films as writer and director. But I enjoy Russian cinema and Kazakhstan was once part of the Soviet Union so maybe
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country although it does border on the Caspian and Aral Seas. The steppe where the film takes place is the largest dry steppe region in the world and the film offers dramatic vistas of this flat, flat plain where people have lived as nomadic herders for centuries and continue to raise sheep, goats, camels in one of the least densely populated regions on earth.
Asa, the main character, has come home from his duties as a sailor in the navy. He hopes to arrange a marriage for himself with the help of his sister and brother-in-law with a local girl he's never met, Tulpan. There is much delicious dry humor in this set up. Asa hopes to set himself up as nomad, living his life in his yurt, scratching out an existence from the hard-scrabble land. The film beautifully portrays for us in almost documentary fashion the life Asa hopes to achieve.
His sister's family is lovingly presented. His sister is beautiful and loves her daughter whose constant singing irritates the stern, hard working father, and her young son who gallops about pretending the stick he is straddling is like the horse his father rides. But the authenticity of the life presented here is documentary like and I mean that in the best possible way. The young boy appears to not to be aware of the camera at all as do all of the actors, camels included. So what we see seems a very authentic look at a fragile way of life.
And therein lies another of the beauties of "Tulpan". As the attempt at arranging the marriage runs into roadblock after roadblock, we see how much Asa loves that existence. His brother-in-law wonders why Asa would choose such a difficult existence, given the choice. But Dvortsevoy, while showing the daily life and death struggles a herdsman must endure, is also able to demonstrate why someone would do whatever to live a rich life in such a beautiful yet primitive place.
I can't recommend "Tulpan" highly enough. See it if you can. I have a feeling what has been captured here will not be around for much longer.
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