NYFF. Tulpan + Interview. Sergey Dvortsevoy.

"A folk tale disguised as a documentary, Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan appears something like actual reality, half-planned and half-found," writes David Phelps in Slant. "Long handheld takes of dust storms and emerging tornados and lightning storms in the ostensibly uninhabitable Betpak Dala desert region of Kazakhstan find, somewhere in the foreground, a story of a few farmers walking among their sheep and huts, whose goal seems less to cultivate the land than protect themselves from it.... If Flaherty's films are about people who have ingeniously learned to adapt, Dvortsevoy's is about those who never will."

David D'Arcy talks with the director of the winner of the Prize of Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year.

"Though Tulpan deals with unfulfilled longing, family tension, and the yawning abyss between city lifestyles and the hardships of surviving the steppe, perhaps the film's true subject is the antithesis of man and nature, and its once-viable resolution in pre-agrarian society with the symbiosis between human and animal needs," writes Damon Smith for FilmCatcher. "When Asa assists a helplessly pregnant ewe at the emotional climax of the film, this on-camera live birth feels at once like an intoxicating revelation - and a paean to a vanished time we've lost all meaningful connection to, at least in the developed world, perhaps forever."

"Mainly known for four short observational documentaries, the director captures the world of the Betpak-Dala in astonishing natural and ethnographic detail in his first fiction film, making what initially seems to be a place of unvaried flatness into a surprisingly dynamic setting, with camels, sheep, and brush dotting the landscape and dust clouds swelling in grey-yellow-lavender skies." Leo Goldsmith in Reverse Shot: "After 100 minutes with Dvortsevoy's film, one feels that one has lived with these characters for weeks, and that the demands and aspirations of their lives are not so very far from one's own."

"Tulpan is a natural symphony disguised as a sweet-natured folktale," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "As the conductor, Dvortsevoy controls the most unruly elements of nature - weather, animals, and children - as if they're puppets on a string. Under his directorial wand, actual dust tornadoes spin, lightning strikes to perfection, a camel performs a choreographed chase, a goat comforts a man with a kiss on the lips, a baby chases after his uncle then stops to play with a turtle, and a sheep gives birth on cue. It's a daring feat, but Dvortsevoy pulls it off."

"Dvortsevoy is as adept at grand scale filmmaking as silent intimacy; indeed, much of the power of the film comes from making the small as epic as the vast landscape that contains it," writes Timothy Sun at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "Toward the end, when harsh reality has killed Asa's dream of marrying his tulip, he quietly draws a flower in the sand, a picture as ephemeral as the dream itself. Dvortsevoy shows us this image suddenly and nonchalantly, as if his roving camera had just happened upon it. Its beauty and simplicity is literally breathtaking - the gasps I heard in the audience made it seem like Peter O'Toole had just blown out the match and we cut to a 70mm shot of the desert."

Online viewing tip. FilmCatcher interviews Dvortsevoy.

Update, 10/15: "Tulpan may have plenty of spectacular shots of Mars-like countrysides, and others in which the chaos of children and puppies and camels wander into and out of a wide shot like the most miraculous choreography, but mostly it's a small story of family and of bending your dreams to fit with what you actually have," writes Alison Willmore at IFC.

Updates, 10/20: "Dvortsevoy captures the human comedy intrinsic in the characters' defiance of their fates, finding quotidian grace in the simple act of survival and natural community," writes Acquarello.

Online viewing tip. Kevin Lee has video of the Q&A with Dvortsevoy.

Update, 10/25: Eric Hynes for Stop Smiling: "Broad-shouldered, big-hearted, covering endless earth under a giant sky - forget about slice of life, Tulpan is the whole pie."

Posted by dwhudson at October 14, 2008 11:58 AM