{"id":25216,"date":"2013-03-20T22:58:12","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T05:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=25216"},"modified":"2013-03-27T07:38:50","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T14:38:50","slug":"tengri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=25216","title":{"rendered":"Tengri"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u05d8\u05e0\u05d2'\u05e8\u05d9-\u05e9\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a few things to be said in favour of Marie-Jaoul de Poncheville\u2019s Tengri: Blue Heavens<\/em>, one must accept. The basic narrative, of love and longing, has a timeless universality that translates easily across temporal borders; the exquisite cinematography of the Central Asian steppes, where the story is largely set, gives the film a suitably melancholic air. But its principal fault, unfortunately, runs through the entire film and undoes all the good intentions of the filmmaker: it is never, one is obliged to concede, a very good idea to mistake ethnography for storytelling.<\/p>\n

Said story, essentially, runs thus: Temur, a wanderer, returns to his ancestral homelands and falls in love with Amira, who just happens to be the headstrong young wife of an oft-absent and inattentive mujahideen. Amidst the agrarian preoccupations of the remote community, mutual attraction is immediate, and is immediately problematic. For the greater good, the two must flee to find their destiny. And that, give or take a couple of drunken episodes and a lots of drunk milk, is that.
\n\"\u05d8\u05e0\u05d2'\u05e8\u05d9-\u05e9\u05de\u05d9\u05dd<\/a>
\nBecause De Poncheville\u2019s film is so rooted in the exotic apartness of its principals and location, whatever charm that Tengri<\/em> \u2013 Kyrgyzstan\u2019s submission for the 2009 Academy Award\u2019s best Foreign Language Film category \u2013\u00a0 might otherwise possess is dissipated by an absolute absence of contextual depth. Dialogue is laconic and sparse, and the mise en scene teeters on the edge of misplaced social concern. There are a few moments of inspiration: Taib, Amira\u2019s doting brother-in-law has a tender presence, and a brief, irresistible turn by her scornful mother provides genuine comedy.<\/p>\n

But on the whole, Tengri<\/em> is flawed from the onset, and drags the carcass of misplaced good intentions around for a full hour and a half. What presumably was intended to present as oblique yet thoughtful, in fact actualises as opaque and misjudged. A pity, that; the few moments of\u00a0 inspiration, when they emerge, do hint at real possibilities.<\/p>\n

Tengri: Blue Heavens<\/em> (2008, 96 min, Kirghiz and Russian with Hebrew subtitles)
\nDirected by Marie Jaoul de Poncheville
\nTengri<\/em> is currently showing in Israeli theatres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a few things to be said in favour of Marie-Jaoul de Poncheville\u2019s Tengri: Blue Heavens, one must accept. The basic narrative, of love and longing, has a timeless universality that translates easily across temporal borders; the exquisite cinematography of the Central Asian steppes, where the story is largely set, gives the film a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}