URGA
A film review by Alan Jay
Copyright 1991 Alan Jay
Dir Nikita Mikhalkov Leading Players: Badema, Bayartu France/USSR 1991 Shown at the 35th London Film Festival.
Capsule: Set in Mongolia, this film is about love, friendship and a lost heritage. (+1)
An Urga is a long pole with a lasso on one end that the Mongolians use for catching their animals on the steppes. They also use it as parting of their mating rituals by catching their wives with it and then planting it in the ground so that they are not disturbed during their love making.
URGA is about a family unit 60 miles from the nearest town who have already got three children (under Chinese Law they are restricted to two) and the husband wants another. Into this situation arrives a Russian construction worker.
Within this premise the film show life on the steppe and the killing and preparing of a sheep for dinner with their guest in graphic detail. The husband is sent out to buy condoms and returns to town with the Russian.
URGA is a film that slowly and beautifully tells its tale but on occasions one was wondering if it too long at two hrs for the plot involved. There are some wondrous moments and so the film is definitely worth seeing as a display of the way life was in Mongolia.
Review by Alan Jay
-- Alan Jay - Editor Connectivity The IBM PC User Group, PO Box 360, Tel. 081-863 1191 Fax: 081-863 6095 Harrow HA1 4LQ, ENGLAND Email: alanj@ibmpcug.CO.UK Path: ..!ukc!ibmpcug!alanj .
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