[ FILM ] The mariner and the mujahedin

VIEW THIS PAGE

Tengri — Blue Heavens was the official Oscar submission for Best Foreign-Language Picture from Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic. It was probably a little too simple in conception to make the official Oscar lineup, but that does not detract much from its cinematic virtues. What it lacks in sophistication it makes up for in the largeness of its conception and a narrative power derived from folktale motifs that date back to time immemorial.

Set in the mountain pastures of Kyrgyzstan, a grandly beautiful landscape that is terrible in its vastness, this story is ideal material for cinema, which can shift its perspective from the intimately human to the universal in the flicker of an eye. And it is in this dual aspect that we are introduced to Temur, a sailor returning to his landlocked country. He comes by bus, then continues deeper into the mountains by horse and then on foot, the camera exploring the vastness of the land, and Temur’s own unexplained history in the complex topography of his otherwise inexpressive face. He is a man who has been places, to whom bad things have happened, and now he returns to a community in which his father, his only kin, has died some years ago. The desolation of his world, both inner and outer, is absolute.

Temur is welcomed into his father’s community, where he meets Amira, a spirited young woman who enjoys the poetry of her semi-nomadic people and tries to stand up to its often-violent patriarchy. She is drawn to Temur and his adventures in far away places, but also accepts that she belongs to Shamshi, a mujahedin fighting in Afghanistan. He returns soon after the arrival of Temur, having imbibed a harsh Islamic dogma that makes him disdainful of the lax faith of his community and unresponsive to his wife, whom he views as a threat to his Islamic virtue.

And so the story is set up as a conflict over a woman that will ultimately lead to some kind of tragedy. This is a community in which sexual transgressions, real or imagined, are settled through the death of one of the parties involved. Amira, who with her fierce love of life and a willfulness that does not easily accept the constraints that society places on a woman, is a splendidly attractive character. Although the film has clear feminist leanings, they are not intrusive, and Amira never becomes an unbelievably perfect character. The portrayal of Temur is far from heroic, and he is prone, as much as his fellow males, to drown his sorrow in vodka and to walk away from problems posed by women. It is Temur’s psychological vulnerability and Amira’s mixture of childish naivety and passion for love and life that makes Tengri more than a romantic potboiler.

There are a few moments when the story reaches out to the wider world, as with Shamshi’s Islamic dogma, a Russian veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war who hangs out in a ramshackle camp not far from Amira’s semi-nomadic community, and Temur’s own unhappy experience in the West as an illegal immigrant. These stories serve to underline the fact that for people from these barren places at the edge of the world, life beyond the mountains is not seen as some kind of promised land, and that hope, the freedom offered by the blue heaven of title, must be found within.

The extended sequence in which Temur and Amira attempt their escape is deftly handled, and while the climax in which the lovers find redemption shifts the tone from realism to allegory, the film has an integrity that allows it to withstand this jolt.