KHADAK

Khadak is a stupendously gorgeous-looking film that you'll can choose to relax and enjoy, or else throw up your hands in boredom and confusion in the second half. I have a weak spot for barren snowy vistas of plains as far as the eye can see, so I stuck with it. But I have to admit I was not exactly sure what was going on toward the end.

Filmed entirely in Mongolia in the winter (where during filmmaking the temps apparently dropped as low as 37° C according to the DVD featurette), Khadak (which is never translated) follows the fate of a three-generation family of nomadic herders, specifically Bagi (Batzul Khayankhyarvaa) the young man whose ancestors are summoning him to his fate of doom that he shares with his dead father. This doom arrives in the form of seizures, and though the shamaness can help him for now, she tells him it is only a matter of time before he joins those ancestors in eternity.

However, the life of Bagi, his mother, and grandfather is up-ended one day when a fleet of trucks come from across the distant plains. Soldiers and men with face masks tell them that a plague is coming that will kill all the animals, so the herders must break down their yurt, gather their things, and come in the truck. Where to? It doesn't matter, there will be a job awaiting them, they are told. The animals are left behind, and the men with the trucks erase the herders' existence, even going so far as to turn on empty tractors and releasing them to roll slowly across the plains until they run out of gas.

Of course the "job" awaiting these poor folks is at a coal quarry, where the herders now live in communist-style concrete high-rises, and go to work doing modern jobs like delivering mail (like Bagi), or driving a crane (like his mom). Grandpa stays at home, feeling useless, peeling potatoes, which are the only food they are given.

One day, Bagi, whose seizures evoke for him sort of visions, crosses paths with a mysterious young woman who is a coal thief. Destiny seems to bring them together, but Bagi's illness, and own fate to join his ancestors, threatens to break them apart.

Actually, there is much more that happens in the second half, but at that point Khadak may start to wear on some viewers' patience. What is real becomes vague as structurally, the film gets more experimental and less literal. The supernatural collides with reality, and it was not entirely clear (at least it wasn't to me) what the heck was going on.

Despite the randomness that Khadak falls into thematically, I was still enraptured by the visual poetry of the film. A shot of a crane's dangling claw being place on the ground is as beautiful as a man riding horseback across the frozen plains. It is really a stunning looking film. If you can relax and forgive the narrative structure that the film falls into, there is really much to appreciate in the poetic Khadak.