User Reviews

The world premiere of the film A Father's Will by directors-debutants Dastan Japar Uulu and Bakyt Mukul took place at the Montreal IFF. Japar Uulu is a young cameraman, Mukul a well-known comedian. With this film, the duo from Kyrgyzstan has produced an astonishing result, powerful and important, with a significance that extends not only to the artistic, but also to the socio-historical level.

The story is as follows: young Azat, who has been living in America for twelve years, returns to his native aul in Kyrgyzstan to fulfill the will of his father, who died a year earlier. From a telephone conversation we understand that he left America rather unexpectedly for his family and especially his mother, and that he sold the car before leaving. He needs that money to pay back the father's debts, which the latter incurred during the harsh 1990s. Their family house has been abandoned, nobody has lived there; however, words are not enough to render the beautiful details of the film: the images reveal a detail that makes this abandonment fatal. Once, a window was smashed in one of the rooms, and an apple tree branch grew into it, which produced fruit; however, in the absence of care and sunlight, the apples and the tree withered and dried up. To put the house in order, Azat cuts off this branch, puts new glass panes into the windows, and overhauls the entire house. There is an impression that he has come back for good. In the aul they treat him, Murat's son, rather coldly; in fact, the father had made debts and left goodness knows where, while the locals had to sort out all the trouble. When Azat finds his uncle, who now lives in the mountains, to repay him, the latter does not even turn around to talk to him face to face. In this atmosphere of aversion and non-forgiveness, Azat sometimes considers going to the local cemetery and secretly bury the father's remains, which he has brought back in an urn. But for the moment he does not tell anyone that his father has died and steadfastly listens to charges leveled at him. Indeed, who knows what the father's will was: to be buried in the native soil, to pay off the debts, or to ask for forgiveness.

In the film there is a remarkable episode, which lasts a whole seven minutes: Azat goes on a britchka with his schoolmate's father; together they have sawn boards and now they are on their way back home. They pass through the entire settlement and speak about the difficulties of the 90s, and that many people left the aul then, abandoning their houses. The camera pans out and shows the panorama of these abandoned houses. Moreover, we seem to travel together with the heroes on this britzka, backwards, feeling uncomfortable. We want to turn round with the whole body to see the horse and the road ahead instead of being pulled backwards. This discomfort at a physical level supports the story of the aul's bad fortune that we see on the screen.

On the whole, the film is strong in its film language, which combines visual observation with physical sensations. The viewer, along with the hero, spends the night in the cold and uncomfortable house, and feels the same abandonment and estrangement. The viewer senses directly how hard this is for the young man, who has left the village as a child, and returns as an outsider. But he cleans the house, and-helped by his schoolmate and wife-fixes it. He gradually repays everybody. And, slowly but steadily, people get used to his presence and understand that he is not a bad guy. At last, after a long search, the father's native brother Choro is found; he has spent a term in prison for Murat's debts. Azat only tells Choro about the father's death, and only then does the funeral go ahead. Even the mullah is a little confused, since he has never buried ashes instead of a body. But they do everything by the book: the ashes are wrapped in a shroud, and carried into the court yard on a funeral cradle. There the inhabitants of the aul are waiting already: relatives and close people have come along. We have seen their faces earlier, when Azat repaid the father's debts. The mullah calls Azat into the centre to accept the responsibility for the father's debts, and the mullah absolves the deceased of his sins. Only then does he read the Janazah, the funeral prayer, one of last honors rendered to the deceased.

But that is not all: the culmination follows on the cemetery, when Murat's remains have already been buried, and the mullah tells Azat to ask the people three times what kind of person the father was. This is also a formal ritual, but in the context of film, we understand that in answer Azat may hear various things. And so Azat asks: "What kind of person was my father?" And the people answer: "A good man." The second time, through tears, Azat asks: "What kind of person was my father?" And the people again answer rapidly: "Good, good." For the third time Azat asks this question. And together with him, we understand that the people have forgiven the father, and that the main request consisted not in being buried in the native land, but to be adequately buried, to be forgiven by relatives and neighbors, and not be buried like a dog in a foreign land. We also understand that Murat has been forgiven, because he raised a worthy son who did everything as should be, although Azat has lived most of his life in a foreign land, outside his culture. But the story of the burial place for the father is read much broader in the film: it is the story of a pardon for those who committed sins in those 1990s, when the new state had only just been established. This is a pardon and farewell to the past. It is a sign that it is time to forget old insults and injuries. Here again, the funeral has not so much of a ritual function, as that of a human pardon. Because we overcome the past only saying goodbye to it.

Gulnara Abikeyeva.

Almaty.

Many compatriots, who have left Kyrgyzstan over the years, sooner or later consider where they want to be buried. Some people have a strong desire to find their last rest in the native land. This theme forms the subject of the film A Father's Will, which was made by two directors, Bakyt Mukul and Dastan Japar Uulu. In the lead role of Azat is Iman Mukul, a graduate of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg.

Azat is the film's protagonist, an American of Kyrgyz origin, who at the age of eleven left the country with his parents to go to the US. Fifteen years later, Azat comes back to Kyrgyzstan to carry out the last will of his late father and bring the latter's ashes back home. The problem is complicated by the fact that Azat's father, Murat, before his departure abroad borrowed money from many local peasants and never returned it.

The son makes a decision that is unpopular with his family (mother and sisters): to go to Kyrgyzstan and ask pardon from everyone, who was undeservedly offended by the father, to pay off all the debts, and then embark on the basic mission of his trip: to begin a conversation with the elders about a burial place for the father's ashes. (Here again: cremation is not allowed in Kyrgyzstan at a legislative level, though in the Bronze age in the territory of Kyrgyzstan, in Talask valley, the ritual of committing a body to the flames prevailed.)

The meditative rhythm of the prologue corresponds to the internal emotional state of the protagonist. On the one hand, he is self-confident, because he clearly sees the purpose of his visit to Kyrgyzstan. In a focused and almost laconic manner, he behaves tactfully: his good upbringing is obvious. On the other hand, Azat has no support yet in his native land, and the fellow villagers look at him as if it had come from another planet, while the creditors don't even want to look his way. His coevals, thinking along stereotypical lines, ask naive questions. Azat understands that for the time being he should not tell anybody about the father's death. First he must restore the father's reputation so that the peasants will not turn away when he asks them to forgive Murat.

As Iman Mukul, who plays Azat, explains: "When I read the script, I paid attention to the fact that Azat was an disobedient boy in his childhood; I would say-he was a choleric, and life made him in such a way that he keeps everything inside. He is fully concentrated on his mission. That's the first thing; and secondly, he does not know our culture, the traditions of the people, and even the language. I even tried to speak with an accent. He arrived to a country where he is a stranger. During the process of immersion in the character, I also changed my gait. It was hard to get into this character, because I am choleric myself, but had to play more of a melancholic person."

When Azat drives to his native village in the car he hired in Bishkek, he remembers well the final stop, the father's house. But, as a close friend of the father tells him: "you have left in the dark, without telling anyone, and your house has not been looked after." Indeed, the house is in a terrible condition: it is almost dilapidated, the branch of a fruit tree has grown through a window and extended inside the house, there is no electricity, and the glass in the windows is broken. But it is a house, a place where the hero can retire any time.

As Iman Mukul says: "When, according to the plot, the repair of the abandoned house of Azat's family is finished, I thought: 'In fact the house is everything'. The house never will be thrown away, it will always wait. I also wanted to say about the role: I heard people say that I seem static in my character. But this in fact depends on style of the film, because the camera remains static during the film; and I thought if I were emotional, very nervous or aggressive, it would be an entirely different approach to my role. Where does the idea of a uniform line come from? In ballet, too, it is important to keep the line, the character, the image; it seems to me that it is very important. The only time when Azat breaks out is in the scene of a meeting with uncle Choro. Up to this episode he was constrained and laconic, although the people he met as the son of "that Murat" answered him sharply and roughly. Azat's emotions had piled up, and, at last, they explode in the scene with uncle Choro..."

It is hard for Azat to constantly face the spiteful attitude of the fellow villagers, and the last drop is the behaviour of uncle Choro, who has autocratically entered his house, not greeted him at the meeting, and now makes claims addressed at Azat's father, while it is the son who has to listen. Therefore Azat's nerves give way, and he snaps. In 1935 Stalin said: "The son does not answer for the father..." (Pravda, 4 Dec. 1935), but in this film the son is ready to answer for the father: it is for this purpose he has come to Kyrgyzstan, and in good time, still in the US, sold the car, collected money to pay off the father's debts, and most important, to carry out the last will of the parent: to bury him on the native soil.

The house is an advanced post of Azat's family and relatives. Azat will leave the native village, and Choro will leave for Russia to earn money. But in any case, they sooner or later return home, and it is important that their house will stand in its place.

Azat will pay all the debts, renew the dialogue with the father's comrades, the village elder and the young men will authorize the burial place for his ashes. With uncle Choro he'll iron out things also. But uncle Choro hastens to his flight, which departs most likely to Russia. But now there is a reason to hope that the house will be looked after.

A Father's Will shows a young man of a new generation and a different way of thinking. This is a serious, purposeful young man, who thinks before saying or doing something. The young man is true to the memory of the father. Through extreme emotional pressure he manages to carry out, point by point, the task of restoring the father's rights to a good memory in the native village.

Gulbara Tolomushova.

Bishkek.