Ága

Escaping urban life - offering a myriad of distractions, choices requiring decisions, consumerism as basic backbone to daily action, soundbites galore - I stepped into 2 hours of stillness, of vast emptiness, of sparsely spoken words. And those words ...such power!

Every frame speaks more than the Characters in this wonderful movie. Really a pleasure to watch.

Nanook (played by Mikhail Aprosimov) and his wife Sedna (played by Feodosia Ivanova) are elderly Eskimos (or whatever the current politically correct term is) living in a yurt make of skins stretched over sticks, in what I guess is Siberia. They continue the traditional way of life, even though it is set in modern times. Nanook is a hunter who snares wildlife and catches fish through the ice. Sedna stays at home and looks after the yurt. They have one husky (played by Hector) who pulls the sled which is their only transport.

The film starts slowly, and stays slow. At first, this is irritating, but once you get used to the rhythm you forget about how slow it is because you become hypnotized by the amazing landscapes. This is a film that should be seen on the big screen: you need the endless vistas of snow to get the feel of it. And it feels real: the sharp clarity of sub-zero air, the vast desert-like snow-covered tundra.

Nanook and Sedna are indispensable to each other, and clearly love each other deeply. They are never at rest - constantly preparing and repairing, using the only materials they have: wood, stones, hides.

Nanook observes that spring is arriving earlier than it used to and that he never before experienced four days of unsuccessful hunting. This might be a hint of global warming, except that Sedna reminds him that this has, indeed, occurred before. Sedna is slightly clairvoyant, predicting the weather and a visit from their son, and dreaming a prophetic vision. This befits her name (Sedna is the name of an Eskimo goddess). Nanook's name is also significant: it is a reference to Robert Flaherty's groundbreaking early documentary "Nanook of the North".

They have two children, who have both left the traditional ways and live more modern lives. Their son visits them on a snowmobile. Their daughter, Aga, works in a mine. It is clear that Nanook and Sedna have chosen to continue their ancient ways, when they had other options.

The day-to-day lives of the Eskimos are fascinating and well photographed. It is a very hard life. They seem to be the only humans for as far as the eye can see. Food is scarce. Conditions are harsh.

Once you get used to the slow pace, Aga is very interesting and incredibly beautiful.

Half the score for half a movie. That was my logic after the end. The abuse of overly prolonged shots can ruin the whole immersion in to am otherwise beautiful and very unfamiliar surroundings. When each shot overstays its welcome, causes, as an observer, to start looking in to every detail and there is where the movie begins to crack. Shots are meticulously setup to only omit clear details on the background or actors not shown consistently through out multiple cuts. The end is undercut by questionable dialogue decisions and yet again incredibly... long... shots...

Raw, slow, quiet, beautiful & magically scored by Hans Zimmer's assistant Penka Kouneva, this is a film about forgiveness. Its story contains a story about life and a dream about death. This is the most important film in Bulgarian cinema. It's a film about the power to love. It's a film infinitely orbiting around its abyss of life. With this and Alienation (2013), dir. Milko Lazarov is now fully accomplished author.