Close to Eden (Urga)
A film by Nikita Mikhalkov
At the Kino, Melbourne, from September 17
Reviewed by Peter Boyle
Nikita Mikhalkov says that he is an unashamedly sentimental Russian. Something about Mongolia, he explains, stirred his Slavic soul and made him put together a five-page script which became a Golden Lion Award-winning film at the 1991 Venice Film Festival. Close to Eden was also voted favourite film at this year's Sydney and Melbourne film festivals.
Mikhalkov keeps his sentimentality under reasonable control in Close to Eden. The steppes of Inner Mongolia form the beautifully filmed backdrop to a look at the relationship between humanity and nature, civilisation and the human spirit. This is no mean feat, because the wild and wide open spaces do tug rather strongly at the emotions, especially when captured on the big screen with the latest cinematographic techniques. Even the ubiquitous flies convey more of the exotic than the maddening annoyance they must be in real life.
The story is of a Mongolian family living pretty much as their forebears did — as shepherds — and their unexpected encounter with a lost Russian truck driver.
Gombo, the shepherd, is urged by his wife, Pagma, to go to town with Serge the truck driver to buy condoms because they already have three children — the limit allowed national minorities under Chinese law. This visit to the town and Gombo's return home and reconciliation with his Mongolian identity form the plot of Close to Eden.
Some may see the film as a simple protest against the encroachment of "civilisation" on the wilderness and traditional Mongolian lifestyle, but the issue is laid out with some complexity. We are shown how people who live close to the wilderness usually take it for granted and are irresistibly attracted to throwaway treasures from the city. Gombo's traditional heritage makes itself felt (in a dream about Genghis Khan) as guilt. City-born Pagma seems to have less trouble blending the old and the new.
Many urban folk feel nostalgic for an imagined lost Eden. For some, the wilderness becomes a symbol of the yearned for unalienated condition; Close to Eden will press the button for them. But for Serge, whose job is to carve a road through the steppe, this nostalgia is stirred by Russian folk songs of ancient heroes while it is actually grounded in his frustration at his life as a migrant contract worker.
Mikhalkov's eye for fine detail saves this film from being preachy. It also charges Close to Eden with uncontrived humour and helps make a convincing case that common human experience can bridge the greatest cultural difference.
The film is rich with symbols of the traditional and the modern — among others the urga (a lasso on the end of a pole used for catching animals or humans and a traditional "do not disturb" sign for love-making couples), a plastic trumpet, a television set on the wild steppe and an accordion (played with gusto by Pagma's and Gombo's daughter). Mikhalkov says he found it all in Mongolia, and this allowed his five-page script to blossom.
Close to Eden is not pretentious with symbolism. Totally different and surprising symbolic and practical values are assigned various objects by Serge and his Mongolian hosts, and all in such a natural way that the audience responds with laughter rather than with a "What was that supposed to mean?".