Japan Cuts ’23: Under the Turquoise Sky

During WWII, Japan’s invasion of Mongolia did not go very well for them. That is why they agreed to a neutrality treaty with Stalin. Yet, after the fall of Communism, the two nations forged strong diplomatic ties. That is a lot of history. The history is particularly complicated for Saburo, an aging industrialist, who served in Mongolia during the War. He has a daughter somewhere on the steppe, whom he hopes his wastrel grandson can find before he dies in Kentaro’s Under the Turquoise Sky, which screens as the centerpiece selection of the 2023 Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film.

Saburo is dying, but he knows the hard-partying Takeshi is not sufficiently responsible to succeed him yet. He hopes his mission to Mongolia might season him a little. Of course, he cannot send him alone. His unlikely companion will be Amaraa, a Mongolian national who was arrested for stealing one of Saburo’s horses (and giving the cops an extremely cinematic chase on horseback). Fortunately, the old man is a good judge of character, so he hopes the horse thief can help the clueless Takeshi find the woman known as “Japanese Tsermaa.”

In terms of storyline, Turquoise Sky is not excessively complicated. It really is your basic road narrative with lessons to be learned by a young man—when he least expects them, of course, but the sweeping Mongolian scenery is an amazing visual (they do not even make to the massive Genghis Khan Statue Complex). Kentaro (an actor turned director, probably best known for roles in Rush Hour 3 and Kiss of the Dragon) also achieves a potently wistful vibe. Arguably, there is strength in the simplicity of his approach.

Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam (who also co-wrote the screenplay) is also quite remarkable as the taciturn but strangely charismatic Amaraa. His relationship with Takeshi is smartly written and subtly played. They do eventually reach friendly terms, but there is never any blubbering bro-mance. They just start to accept each other.

Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan

Today, you can find the name “Genghis Khan” everywhere throughout modern Mongolia. He sits magnificently astride the monumental equestrian statue erected in 2008, which has quickly become one of the nation’s top-drawing (and literally biggest) tourist attractions. Yet, during its years as satellite-state of the Soviet Union, Genghis Khan was demonized in propaganda and banished from public discourse. A lot of good change came quickly to Mongolia, but the nation is still struggling to process subsequent social upheavals. Director-cinematographer-co-producer Robert H. Lieberman chronicles Mongolia’s glorious history and examines its future challenges in Echoes of Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan, which opens in select theaters this Friday.

Ironically, everything bad you might think about Genghis Khan (a.k.a. Temujin) is largely the result of Communist disinformation. Yes, he was a conqueror of kingdoms, whose empire spanned three times the territory Alexander the Great controlled at his peak. However, as he incorporated new people into his empire, he extended to them rights they never had. Arguably, Genghis Khan “invented” the right of religious liberty, as we know it today. He also forbade the kidnapping of women and established an early form of diplomatic immunity.

Yet, the Communist regime jealousy suppressed celebration of the Mongolian national hero. (For comparable hypotheticals of a nation erasing its cultural-historical legacy, imagine the United Kingdom trying to cancel King Arthur, or America forbidding mention of George Washington, neither of which quite captures the scope of the Communist Party’s negation of Genghis Khan.)

One historical episode explained in the film that has particular resonance for our world today came relatively early in Genghis Khan’s career of conquest, when the Uyghur people sent an emissary, inviting his invasion of their lands, in order to liberate them from their oppressors. It came as a surprise to the Mongol leader, but he obliged.

The film also archly observes how many commissars from the early Communist era met suspiciously premature demises—and openly invites the audience to make the obvious conclusions. Even more fundamentally, when watching Lieberman’s film, viewers will be immediately struck but the sensitive geographic position Mongolia occupies, as a functioning democracy nestled between China and Russia.

It is pretty clear Mongolia is a country Americans should be thinking about much more than we are. Although Mongolians have pretty forcefully repudiated the Twentieth Century Communist era (the 130-foot Genghis Khan memorial says so, loud and clear), they still have to maintain cordial relations with Russia. They also have considerable cultural ties, having adopted Russian tastes in opera and ballet, to a surprising extent, as Lieberman and company vividly illustrate.

Furthermore, Americans can well relate to Mongolia’s current struggles with increased urbanization and a widening gap between the city life of Ulaanbaatar (UB) and the traditional way of life on the steppe. Lieberman takes viewers into the gers (or yurts) of traditional herders, which look warm and cozy on the steppe. However, he also illustrates the downsides to coal-heated ger-living in the urban tent-cities of nomads who have been recently force to relocate to UB.

Kino Polska ’18: Zud

Nomads can’t bet the farm, but they have livestock. Unfortunately, young Sukhbat’s family lost their herd to a sudden snap of winter foulness. Now their only hope to avoid ruin is winning a regional horse race. Growing up is hard, but so is every other aspect of life in Marta Minorowicz’s Zud (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Kino Polska at the BAM Cinematek.

The characters and settings are pure Mongolian, but this is a Polish film. Likewise, it certainly has the look and feel of an unscripted observational documentary, but it is in fact a fictional narrative. However, the difficulties facing Mongolia’s nomadic herders is certainly true enough. Presumably, the cast of steppe-based nomads could relate. Indeed, there is probably a good deal of inadvertent method acting going on in this film.

Sukhbat’s father is deeply in debt and the note is already past-due. The lending authorities will not give him anymore time, despite the loss of his cattle. He therefore places all his hopes on a promising young wild stallion he has just broken. Sukhbat will be the jockey and serve as the horse’s primary training, or at least that is what he is told. Alas, nothing he does is ever good enough for his micromanaging father, who is clearly feeling the pressure of their precarious situation.

This is one tough coming of age story. Minorowicz’s portrayal of nomadic life clearly suggests families are not held together by love but by a survival imperative. It certainly feels true to life, since it was shot on remote locations, employing nonprofessional local actors, seemingly playing thinly fictionalized analogs of themselves. She also films with an anthropologist’s eye, investing considerable time in many of the regular tasks and everyday rituals that have defined her characters’ lives.

Frankly, Minorowicz could have easily passed Zud off as a legit documentary if she wanted to, so give her credit for being forthright. Presumably, she also made the film she set out to make, so she and Kenneth McBride should want all their due credit for their screenplay. Yet, it is hard to imagine how scripted many of these scenes could have been.

Regardless of all that, as his namesake, Sukhbat Batsaikhan is a highly compelling young protagonist. You would assume he is really just going about his chores, heedless of the camera. However, Batsaikhan Budee is an even more impressive actor, because all of his anxiety and stress looks alarmingly real.

Zud is a quiet, immersive film, but it packs an arsenic-laced punch in the final minutes. Despite being a narrative, it will not be sufficiently narrative-driven for conventional viewers, but it absolutely lets the audience place themselves in lives that are radically different from our own. Recommended more as an experience than a film per se, Zud screens Friday night (9/21), as part of Kino Polska at BAM.

Hope on the Steppe: The Horse Boy

During the era of the Stalinist-aligned Choibalsan regime, Mongolia’s Communist government subjugated all organized forms of religion. However, Shamanism survived in remote pockets of the Mongolian Steppe. Legalized after the democratic revolution, the Mongolia’s mystical practitioners represent an unlikely avenue of hope for the parents of a severely autistic child in director-cinematographer Michel Orion Scott’s The Horse Boy (trailer here), which airs this coming Tuesday as part of the current season of Independent Lens on PBS.

At two years old, Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff’s son Rowan is almost completely isolated socially. His verbal skills have not developed, while his tantrums have grown more pronounced. Unfortunately, he had proved resistant to every conventional pharmaceutical, dietary, and therapeutic treatment. He only responded to animals, particularly the horses of a nearby farm. Willing to try anything to reach his son, Isaacson sought out a form of the traditional healing that also incorporated horses: Mongolian Shamanism.

Despite her understandable reluctance, Isaacson convinces the equally concerned Neff to journey as a family to the remote Asian nation. Traveling from one shaman to another, Rowan often shows marked signs of improvement, only to lapse back just as quickly. Indeed, it would be an emotionally exhausting trip for both parents.

While Isaacson’s trek might sound like an ill-conceived act of desperation, but Scott clearly establishes the intensity of Rowan’s condition. As a result, viewers can well understand why his parents would resort to a Hail Mary pass, or perhaps an act of faith. However, at least in the broadcast cut, Horse offers little background or context on Mongolian Shamanistic practices. Neither does it provide much sense of the Mongolians as individuals, even though the young son of their guide played a considerable role drawing Rowan out of his shell, instead keeping the focus squarely on Rowan and his parents.

Though the capital city of Ulaanbaatar looks economically depressed and depressing, the steppe looks crisp and arresting through Scott’s lens. Well edited for broadcast, Horse never gets bogged down in Isaacson and Neff’s obvious anxieties and self-doubts. Regardless of the film’s “New Age” implications, the inherent family drama of Rowan’s story is undeniably compelling. One can well understand why it was recognized by the Heartland Film Institute with their Truly Moving Picture Award. It airs this coming Tuesday (5/11) on most PBS outlets.