lastliberal
The fact that this film won almost every award it was nominated for is of little consequence to the average film goer. It is about life on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan. Yes, that Kazakhstan, but without Sasha Baron Cohen.Life here is very hard. There is not a tree in sight, and the wind whips the dirt around mercilessly. Asa just returned from his tour of duty in the Russian Navy, and we hear him tell his potential in-laws of the things he encountered. He is after the hand of Tulpan, the only available bride in the area. He wants to settle down and raise sheep, but he must have a wife. No deal. She thinks his ears are too big, but I believe it is mama that wants her to do more than just be a wife who cooks and cleans and has babies on the steppes.Asa keeps trying to win her as he tries to become a shepherd. He is not doing well at either.The funniest part of the film is the vet. You can't describe what he does with a cigarette, but you have to see it.It won't win any popularity contests, but it is worth seeing.
mmunier
For our group it was our 3rd visit to this "area", and out of the four of us, three found it was one too many. A few years back we started with "The Weeping Camel", having reasonably enjoyed it later on we also saw "The cave of the yellow dog" (I hope I got those titles right!) Then "Tulpan" came with such raving reviews that we had to see it too. Well we did and it was a little like a sentence. I couldn't say it was like watching grass growing for the obvious reason (no this is not a spoiler!) Usually though I enjoy revisiting places I "have been" before but somehow it did not work anymore for me this time.... and now this is THE SPOILER: it was not much different than the two previously mentioned stories. That's it - how long can you watch people living in a confine area where very little happens. Yes the panorama has something, yes it's poetic but no it's not for me anymore.When I read some of the reviews here or elsewhere I think of a funny event that happened at a local market where a man was demonstrating a gadget to get your car running at a high performance with little fuel. It was amazing and very convincing with a huge running engine being part of the demonstration. I did buy two of these gadgets! As I continued to wander about the market I bumped in something even more amazing...The same person was now demonstrating potato peelers and with the same verbal "dexterity"!Now, this could be another spoiler... There was a certain goat that made me ponder whether it could have had some very symbolic representations and made me feel that perhaps we, as an audience, were the subject of some of these representation. Perhaps it's safer to go and see some movies without reading too much about or keep a check on expectation. Perhaps it could be wise to check one's mood as well on the day if you have reason to believe that it could affect your perception. But first timers you should enjoy it because it still is special mm
john-575
A double free pass to Tulpan accompanied tickets I'd won to another film. The previews of Tulpan I'd seen weeks before looked interesting enough but sadly the film failed to excite or satisfy. The location is dull, drab and dusty to the extreme. Liked the main characters sister, disliked her Ghenghis Khan like husband. The friend who drove the tractor wore very thin, very quickly. So for me this part film, part documentary labored to make it's point. For me it was like going around in circles and was really 2 hours I'll never see again.When so many good films of many origins fail to get commercial release I'm at a bit of a loss why this film did. Or why it's won as many awards as it has.2009 motto "beware of PR agencies bearing unasked for free movie tickets"Postscript... nearly 2 weeks I'll make an early nomination this will be my worst film of 2009. 2nd worst Easy Virtue also another preview freebie. But back to Tulpan it was a excruciating..excruciatingly laboured and slow.
Chris Knipp
Another film from Kazakhstan, but unlike the NYFF's 'Chouga,' far from being set in the newly rich urban part of the country. Dvortsevoy, a successful documentary filmmaker, chose to make this, his first feature, in the ethnographic mode, among shepherds in the Betpak Dala, the steppe, a region of scrubby grass, dirt, flatland, whirling wind storms and stormy skies. The technique is to work in near-wilderness, among non-actors, with nothing but camels or donkeys or rugged trucks to travel by, surrounded by a herd of sheep and a few goats, living in a yurt. The method and setting resemble those of Dava and Falorni's 'The Weeping Camel,' but the focus this time is not as anecdotal and the story raises fewer troubling questions. It's still not certain that the effect of "authenticity" means the events we're witnessing truthfully depict life in the steppe. But the sense of trying to adapt to a harsh environment and culture is powerful and the landscape is awesome, and the sheep births we witness are unquestionably real.The protagonist is Asa (Askat Kuchinchirekov). He is a young sailor who's just finished his military service who comes out to the "Hunger Steppe" to live with the family of his sister Samal (Samal Eslyamova), headed by her husband, an older man, Ondas (Ondasyn Besikasov). Sailors draw their dreams under the lapels of their uniforms and Asa's sketch shows the plain with a yurt, children, camels, and the sun shining. Apparently he is from somewhere else (it's not clear how his sister got to be Ondas' wife) but he doesn't want city life, he wants to make his paradise out here. He dreams of prospering as a shepherd, doing so well he can buy solar panels to put on his yurt so he can have electricity. His pal is the nutty Boni (Tulepbergen Baisakalov), a transport driver whose truck is plastered with magazine photos of nude babes and who plays loud pop music as he drives madly across the plain. It's Boni who first brings Asa to the yurt of Ondas and who dreams and schemes with him.Driven by Boni, Ondas takes Asa more than once a day's ride to a family who have an eligible daughter, the beautiful Tulpan (Tulip), whom the suitor only glimpses. She watches behind a screen. At these interviews Asa has an unfortunate tendency to dwell on a story about how he successfully fought an octopus. It doesn't seem to go over with Tulpan's aged dad (Amangeldi Nurzhanbayev ) or her mother (Tazhyban Kalykulova), who apparently has listened with a sympathetic ear to her desire to go off to college. Tulpan says she doesn't care for Asa, anyway, says his ears are too big. End of story. Ondas says that if Asa gets a wife, he can have a flock of his own, and only then. But there are no other women around. Tulpan becomes little more than Asa's dream, like the idyllic yurt and flock and prosperity and happy life. What can Asa do? Well, he can find a lost pregnant sheep and assist in its giving birth to a healthy lamb. But he still is very ambivalent about whether he wants to stay and face Ondas' disapproval or strike out for Sakhalin island as Boni wants or go to the capital, Astana, where there are probably jobs--and eligible women. But what stands out in 'Tulpan' is Asa's dream--the little picture under the collar of his sailor jacket that seems to draw him back every time he packs up his little valise and starts to go away.Dvortsevoy populates his landscape and the yurt with noisy characters to break the sounds of silence and the roaring winds. Samal and her daughter Nika love to sing at the top of their lungs, with sometimes pleasing, sometimes grating effect. Beke is a little boy with a great memory who listens to the radio broadcasts in Russian and can recite the national and global and cultural news verbatim on Ondas' command. Ondas himself is often barking out harsh commands. There is the smallest boy, who runs around chirping and laughing all the time riding a wooden stick, an indomitable spirit and perhaps potentially as nutty as Boni. The omnipresent sheep of Ondas' flock seem to be too often growing weak and dying. A vet (Esentai Tulendiev) has to come in with Ondas' boss to assess the cause: he decrees that the animals are not sick (or poisoned by chemical waste like the ones in the Naples region), buy just hungry. The yurt has to be moved to better grazing land.This is an Arte co-production. It's not a great film by any means; it's technical aspects are minimal. But some will be impressed by its vividness. Asa is a winsome character and there are moments when the wind and the sky create a wild poetry. The sheep, in all their noise and disorder, fill the screen powerfully too. This may have been designed to be seen on television but it is powerful on a big screen.The film won the Un Certain Regard Prize--Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema, 2008, and is part of the NYFF.
