Sturm über Asien

The journey of Bair, the Mongol, is almost a ritualistic study of the Mongols fighting alongside the Partisans, who are helping the Soviets against a British occupation. It also shows, in great detail, the plight of the struggling fur-trader in 1920 northern Russia. I think this is the first film from 1928 that I feel suffered a little from being silent, although the musical score provided by the DVD, does help with the pace of the film. The story is slightly jerky though and they do hang on certain scenes a little long. That doesn't mean this is a bad film. By no stretch, is that the case. I loved this film accept for those knit-picks.

Director Vsevolod Pudovkin, choreographed many great battle scenes. They utilize some very cool editing tricks, especially in my two favorite scenes. In the first scene, when the warning goes out to find the man who drew the white man's blood, they use great flip editing and quick-cuts, most notably, during the storm/battle at the end. Lots of metaphorical montage.

The battle in the woods was fantastic also. Great emotion! The death of the Partisan leader shows great emotion, with great facial expressions on the actors. Vsevolod Pudovkin captures moody imagery of the woods that enhances the experience. All-in-all, a beautiful film, which almost attains a flow, that is like a poetic symphony, until it hits those little knit-picks I mentioned earlier.

8.8 (B+ MyGrade) = 8 IMDB.

This is an unusual project, deeply polemic like all Soviet cinema of the period but with the entire 'tyrants and proles' puppet play relocated to the far eastern steppe; so standing in for the exploited but spirited with fight peoples are now the indigenous Mongols, but again trapped between antiquated, superstitious religion and a cruel ruling elite financed by unethical capitalism. Workers back in Moscow and Lenigrand were supposed to relate.

Pudovkin is talented in making the equivalence, he intercuts the military aristocrats being pampered and groomed for an occasion with the Buddhist priests being helped in their ceremonial attire to receive them. The meeting of these two oppressors is marked with secret dances made to look chaotic, and Buddhist music made to sound intentionally grating and dissonant.

The mockery continues inside the temple, with the all-knowing, wise high lama revealed to be only a child; he looks apprehensive as everyone accords him the utmost respect. The insidious comments are particularly egregious when viewed in context of what the Buddhist were about to suffer in the hands of the Chinese comrades and how much of that elaborate spiritual culture was trampled under the mass-suicide of Mao's agricultural reforms.

Most of it flows by without much incident; vast dusty landscapes, petty human cruelties. Wars, and counterwars. The plot is eventually about a humble Mongol fur trapper being mistaken for the heir of Genghis Khan and groomed by the military to be the puppet ruler of a new nation.

Pudovkin was never quite an Eisenstein or Dovzhenko; he could concentrate his films into a motion as pervasive as they did, but couldn't sustain for as long. So we get bumpy stretches across otherwise pleasant vistas.

But then we have the ending, absolutely one of the finest pieces of silent cinema. It is a karmic hurricane of splintered image; motion that begins indoors with a fight is eventually transferred outside and escalates in a revolutionary apocalypse of stunning violence that scatters an entire army across the steppe like dead leaves. Trees, dust, crops, dirt - all rushing before the camera like Pudovkin's montage is so frenzied and powerful it threatens to rip apart the very fabric of the world.

Watch the film just so you get to this part, then watch side by side with Kuleshov's By the Law for the haunting aftermath of the apocalypse that begins here, and Zemlya for how it's endured. The call is, as usual, for revolution, but we can use it now in all three films as a broader metaphor about the effort to release the energies of the soul, about a metaphysical breakthrough.

Watch like you were having your soul trained for this breakthrough.

Storm Over Asia (1928) : Brief Review -

A great attempt to panegyrize Soviet propaganda through a Mangolian revolt against British. During 20s and 30s decade almost all the foreign language cinemas were doing fine with Propoganda films, actually even better than Hollywood. Storm Over Asia is another fine example of it but sadly not very popular. Thankfully it has made it to the list of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die hence it came in my watchlist otherwise i don't think i would have ever heard of this film. It doesn't matter what propaganda film tries to prove, i only care about cinematic aspects of the filmmaking unless it goes terribly wrong with its conviction over any revolutionary subject. Storm Over Asia is the story about the unknown heir of the great Genghis Khan. After a run-in with the law, a Mongolian man becomes a fugitive and joins the Russian Civil War. He thrashes the opportunistic friendliness of British army and gathers his people to fight for their freedom. In 120 minutes, this film could have been more gripping. I don't know why but it looked little slow. Practically, the climax deserved more time than what it got and i think that quick-ripped conclusion could have been much bigger and better. That momentum was missing which was earlier there in the first half. The film has some issues with the intertitles too. The characters act but the intertitle appears even before we see them talking on screen. So, it feels like a rehearsed puppet show than a silent feature film. I think that can be overlooked considering the standards of the filmmaking of that particular cinema industry. Otherwise, it's a very good movie with detailed information and grand presentation. I don't know much about the history of that particular subject but i liked the sense of historic storytelling of the director Vsevolod Pudovkin. Few erros but overall an enjoyable flick.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

"Storm Over Asia" is a well made film. As other reviewers have pointed out, the film expertly uses film editing to make a very modern style film for 1928. It is really artistic and worth seeing--though there are also some serious lulls in the film that could have been tightened up a bit. However, that being said, the film is very obvious propaganda by the new Soviet government--and it sure isn't subtle about it.

A Mongol goes to town to sell a very valuable silver fox skin to the evil capitalists. Naturally, being evil (and fat) capitalists, they cheat the simple Mongolian man BUT they have a surprise--he won't just stand there and accept this maltreatment. He attacks the bad white men and flees to the hills--and eventually becomes a member of the communist partisans in the Russian Revolution. At this point, the film seems to drop this plot and A LOT of footage of Mongolian Buddhists is shown--including their costumes, dances and the like. At first, it seems like a nice bit of footage about these people but eventually you realize that the film is meant to mock Buddhist beliefs about the reincarnated Lama. Then, the communist forces attack--trying to kill off the evil forces of counter-revolution and international capitalism. Well what about our Mongolian hero? Where does he come into all this? See the film and find out for yourself--and you'll probably be quite surprised where the film goes next.

From an artistic point of view, the film is pretty good. The ending is also quite rousing. But as propaganda, it's very heavy-handed and not nearly as convincing or realistic as the much more famous film, "Potemkin" (also called "Battleship Potemkin"). I do understand that the new Soviet government was attempting to legitimize itself and drum up support by this film, but it just seemed to take the wrong approach as it lacked subtlety. As another reviewer pointed out, the villains in this film are just caricatures.

By the way, IMDb lists the film at 82 minutes. The DVD I watched clocks in at 125 minutes!! Is IMDb wrong or are there multiple versions and I just saw a longer one?

"Possess your soul in patience!" my grandmother used to chide me until I could settle down and get with whatever new experience I was about to endure--and learn from. Today's viewer will need to do the same to get with the unusual rhythms of this amazing saga--with the mediocre print, with a narrative that at first seems scattered, and with a culture totally different from much of anything encountered today. But it is worth it, and by the end, you may be totally mesmerized by the quiet force of a man who inadvertently becomes a hero, by powerful film editing from Podovkin that steadily reaches a stunning conclusion, and, if you allow yourself to immerse yourself in Mongolia in the early part of the last century, an experience unlike anything in modern film.