Azerbaijan
80 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Steppe Man doesn't start out with the main character being a steppe man. For a little while, we follow him as a steppe boy before his sudden transition to adulthood comes. Usually I'm not too fond of boys' coming-of-age stories, but I really did like the way this one approaches growing up. There's not as much gruffness and machismo as usual. The boy's father doesn't coddle him but he also doesn't seem like the type to just shove him into situations headfirst with no love or encouragement. He tells the boy stories, does things for him, you know. It's a hard life they live but they make room for tenderness.
I really admired this movie for not being afraid to be purely visual sometimes, to not try and put in dialogue where it would have made a situation seem forced or too obviously scripted. It's not afraid to have a dramatic orchestral swell and then just show some camels being corralled. It's not afraid to have big lead-ups with no real payoff other than another shot of the dusty steppes and the main character's herd of camels. Being submitted to the Academy Awards, this film would have to contend with not only movies from the US but also movies from smaller countries that went a more modernized route with their aesthetic, and since this is an unassuming movie with no real hidden message (aside from maybe "don't make fun of people living alone out in the steppes"), I'm not surprised it didn't get as much recognition as it deserved.
There's not a whole lot that actually happens throughout the runtime of the film, but it's a testament to directorial (and writers') talent that it never gets boring or even slips into the category of being deliberately meditative. It's a bare-bones movie, but not a slow one. The filmmakers knew how to set up two characters- steppe man and his love interest- and have them play off of each other without talking, and although I'm also not particularly fond of that brand of love story where one half starts out hating the other half, the way steppe man and his woman orbit around each other for a long time before steppe man realizes how he feels about her was very well set up.
It does kind of botch the ending a bit though. It's much too abrupt. I guess since there was very little in the way of conflict, there wasn't much of an opportunity for a climax that would have brought the film to a neat close. The ending is as simple as the 85 minutes preceding it, and like the rest of the film, it's not some elaborate tearjerking journey from rags to riches like the Academy generally tends to go wild over. It's just a story about a man living apart from the greater world. He doesn't have to change, he doesn't have to have any revelations about his life. He just follows the same pattern he's presumably been following all his life and we as viewers are here to witness that.
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ReplyDeleteA small whirlwind drifts across the vast steppe and gradually dissolves, followed by the crawling of a turtle. The montage of these two visual sequences at the beginning of the film metaphorically describes the subject and how the story will be told here. Tales of atmospheric turmoil and moments of calm in and unto itself, of life in the countryside of the Azerbaijani desert, of a pace of life beyond civilization. A camel is born and Old Ulu plays with soap stone figures and tells his son, who he only calls “Steppe Man”, a story. It is the legend of the Steppe Man, who is sitting outside one day in the shade of a rock and tending his herd of camels. A hoopoe bird lands on the rock and transforms into a beautiful young woman. This legend from his childhood turns into magical reality for the grown-up boy, who has taken over his father’s flock and cabin after his death. One day, out of nowhere, a woman appears in the steppe, now split right down the middle by a noisy highway. She has left her husband’s car after an argument and now she is here. Like a fairy godmother she tidies up the cabin and cleans the windows. He tries to send her away, but she stays. A story begins for the camel herder and the woman from the distant city, an escapee from civilization. This story will turn over a new leaf in their lives and change them both. The question of what is important? What is worthwhile in life? This fairy tale for adults, a cinematic quest for identity, finds answers not in words but in pictures. And except for a few melodramatically pointed sequences – the jealous husband of the woman shows up in front of Steppe Man’s cabin – this film works mostly in calm images, giving this legend – with all its metamorphoses and twists, its very own mythological truth.
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http://hlc-cultcritic.com/film-month-05-2017-steppe-man/
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