Uroki garmonii

The social and psychological effects of bullying are graphically observed in Emir Baigazin's remarkable first feature Harmony Lessons. Honored at Tribeca and Seattle, the Kazakh-German co-feature also won a Silver Bear for best artistic contribution at the Berlinale, honoring the cinematography of Aziz Zhambakiyev who brilliantly captures the stark beauty of the desolate Kazakhstan landscape. Set in a remote village, Harmony Lessons is a deeply disturbing and often brutal look at power relationships at a Kazakh high school. Thriving on intimidation, extortion, and violence, the bullying is tolerated by indifferent school administrators and absent parents, its graphic realism making films on bullying such as Gus van Sant's Elephant look like Mary Poppins.

Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov), a highly intelligent and scientifically-minded 13-year-old boy, lives with his elderly grandmother (Bagila Kobenova) in sparsely furnished surroundings. Aidarbekov, who was discovered by the director in an orphanage, turns in a sharply controlled performance that adds mystery and depth to his character. Reminiscent of the opening scene in Damien Odoul's Deep Breath, the film opens with Aslan robotically butchering a sheep, even after playing games with it, chasing it around the yard as if it were his pet. The absence of compassion is even more prevalent at school, a barren-looking institution that feels as if it could have once been a prisoner of war camp.

The school is run, not by teachers or administrators, but by a hierarchy of bullies, personified by the malicious Bolat (Aslan Anarbayev) who, with his gang of yes men, is the school go-to guy in an extortion racket run by off-campus criminals to support their friends in prison. Bolat is the enforcer in his class, making sure the younger kids pay their share of protection money. If they are late or cannot pay, they receive physical punishment in front of everyone. Although Aslan is not part of the group being extorted, he receives an even worse punishment. Humiliated during a routine medical examination when he falls for a cruel joke, Bolat makes sure everyone keeps him in isolation, refusing to talk to him or sit next to him in class.

Feeling the effects of his exile, Aslan exhibits some curious behavior of his own. Suddenly becoming obsessed with cleanliness, he changes his clothes daily and takes frequent baths, an activity questioned by his grandmother. Mimicking the behavior of the bullies, he traps cockroaches and feeds them to lizards, even bizarrely creating a miniature electric chair in order to execute an undesirable roach. Even when he makes friends with Mirsayan (Mukhtar Andassov), a boy visiting from the city, the dehumanizing cycle does not end. Mirsayan makes a valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful effort to challenge the tormentors but his failure only pushes Aslan into even darker territory and inevitably leads to tragedy.

Harmony Lessons is not an easy watch, yet it is a haunting and lyrical film that, even in its bleakest moments, conveys an unmistakable experience of light, often resembling a symbolist painting depicting psychological states of mind. Taking risks in his first film, the 29-year-old Baigazin courageously exposes a society governed by the domination of the weak by the strong. From the brutality of the police to the bullying at school to the way animals and even insects are treated, the film mirrors an increasing cycle of violence in a society governed by the false notion of survival of the fittest.

-- Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com --

Acclaimed Berlinale Golden Bear award winning debut Harmony Lessons makes it's way to the CPH PIX Film Festival. A terse, gruelling Darwinian drama, and just about the best film I've seen so far this year.

We're first introduced to lonesome thirteen-year-old Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov) while he chases a bouncing sheep across his grandmother's farm. It's a playful sequence, totally transformed when – with an unnerving stoney complexion – Aslan proceeds to capture the ewe, slit it's throat and prepare it for food. Perhaps it's a normalised, essential activity in bucolic Kazakhstan, but it's nevertheless a poetic foreshadowing of the savagery we will soon witness.

Life in the classroom is far from peachy for Aslan either. After a malicious sex-ed prank leaves him humiliated and ostracised, he's left wandering alone in the shadows of the school corridors. Like any institution, there is a strict hierarchy here. Top of the wolf pack and chief tormentor is Bolat (Alsna Anarbayev) who, with his team of subservient wing-men, run an underground extortion circuit; swiping money from the smaller school kids, and passing it upwards to those older and taller than he. Meanwhile, the OCD suffering Aslan returns to his home chambers every night to conduct callous scientific experiments on the defenceless insects that populate his decrepit home. When these acts of brutality no longer suffice, Aslan calculates a scheme that he hopes will overthrow the horrendous autocracy.

Baigazan exhorts a great deal of ingenuity into the ripe Lord of the Flies rehash premise, even if his necessity for allegory may be considered to some as a little belaboured. An adept purveyor of cinematic symmetry, he uses the drab school compound to reflect the prismatic, oppressive and religiously conflicted society these youths will soon be forced into. But, for now, they are still precarious teenagers; cloaked in ill-fitting school uniforms like would-be mafioso clobber. This is no song-and-dance Bugsy Malone, however. Framed with morbid fascination by cinematographer Aziz Zhambakiyev, the situation is observed rather than explored, with Aslan kept at such an objective distance that he is presented as more of an emotionally vapid wild beast than a despairing child. Found by Baigazan in a children's shelter, there's such a haunting sincerity to Timur Aidarbekov's performance that the social unrest subtext is palpable to all, and – despite your eagerness to look away – the tragedy is so cinematically entrancing that you won't be able to.

As writer, director and editor, cineaste Baigazan's debut is enriched with nods to other filmmakers, deploying a Bresson-like moral economy to the portrait of grim suburban schooling, mixed with the severity of the Dardenne Brothers' L'infant, and subtle glimpses of Tarkovsky's oneiric surrealism come the film's beguiling, unforgettable end. Even still, Baigazan is working within his own aesthetic realm, with a rare, vehemently grim portrait of life in Kazakhstan. Primitive and poetic, Harmony Lessons tackles the universal theme of angst-riddled adolescence and merciless social autonomy to both cruel and beautiful aplomb.

-- Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com --

I saw this film at the Berlinale film festival 2013, as part of the official Competition. It was nominated for the Golden Bear. It won a Silver Bear for the camera work. New director Emir Baigazin of Kazakhstan makes his debut with this film. His potential has been noted, as he won several other prizes later on. My own overall impression, regardless of all pros and cons outlined below, concurs that this director shows promise.

I got stuck with mixed feelings during the screening. On the positive side, it showcased several present-day topics, like youth gangs and bullying within schools. Though having seen issues along this line many times before, this film twists these in a original way. Apart from that, given the school environment we see a lot of young actors, most of them performing splendidly and acting very believably, though presumably no professional actors.

On the negative side, this film could have been so much better when relevant clues were not left out. I missed some logic in the story line as it developed. Bullying combined with collecting money, clothes or other possessions from fellow students, is apparently an important theme in the story. It confused me to learn that different groups were doing this with very different reasons, one needing money to support people in prison, others purely for their own purposes. I would not be surprised when I'd missed something obvious, but anyway it confused me all the time.

Aforementioned original twist is that several uncomfortable scenes are included for the sole purpose of demonstrating a hierarchy in tormentors and victims, the latter becoming tormentors themselves when they get the chance or when required to support their existence. I nevertheless think that torturing cockroaches by our main character, being the obvious victim within the core story, is not something we necessarily need to witness. It could better be implied rather than showing this twice in a row, as such not a nice thing to do to us viewers. That another scene shows the cockroaches being hung as food for the lizards, is less bad and fitting in Darwin's theories about survival of the fittest (eat, or get eaten) that we see taught in class. All of this has an obvious meaning, given the context at hand. Less relevant was the electroshock torture on cockroaches in still an other scene, somewhat overdoing in demonstrating (again) the always existing hierarchy that is fundamental to how living species co-exist.

The scenes in the police station show a more "official" sort of violence. The police has got 48 hours to obtain a confession, and are very sure that they have the guilty (at least one of them) in their hands. But none of the two arrestees gives in, even when told halfway the proceedings that they have a written statement of the other one, and that alone suffices to bring the case in court. Stubbornly, they deny everything, even after severe physical pressure that gets heavier when time passes. Inconsequentially, our main character seems to have no problems with the unhygienic conditions in his prison cell, very unlike his former extravagant cling to hygiene, caused by an uncomfortable incident during a medical examination.

By the way: Some reviewers seem impressed by how Aslan catches, kills and skins a sheep, shown in the opening scene. On a farm as the one where he lives this is standard operating procedure and nothing out of the ordinary (I say this being grown up on a farm myself). It may be construed, however, to foreshadow the "eaten, or got eaten" hierarchy that appears later on as the recurring theme in this film.

All in all, I fail to make all heads and tails out of the narrative and the implied points that the film makers try to make. Believable casting and acting compensate for a lot of missing items in the story, where important clues seem left out. In addition, I cannot fully explain why I myself felt to be kept on a distance; for some reason preventing us from getting emotionally involved with the main characters. Last but not least, be prepared for a few uncomfortable scenes, where you rather want to look the other way, and some of them a bit over-the-top emphasizing the issue that we already grasped. Yet, a promising debut of this new director from a country that we don't recognize as producing many films with prize winning potential.

This movie is about the young boy, Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov), who lives in a small rural town in Kazakhstan, being raised by his grandmother, with no siblings or parents around. When Aslan goes to school, he is constantly bullied by the school's worst thug, Bolat (Aslan Anarbayev), who also racketeers money and valuable items to gangsters on the school property.

Bolat has a grudge against Aslan for some reason, and tricks him into drinking a glass of penis-dipped water, which makes Aslan the laughing-stock of all the other kids in the school. Bolat even threatens the other kids with severe beatings, so they won't befriend or even talk to Aslan, as Bolat just hates him so much.

But one day, a new boy arrives in class, Mirsain (Mukhtar Andassov), who comes from the big city. He quickly befriends Aslan, and won't stand for Bolat's threats, even though he regularly beats both of them up, with the help of his loyal goons. Now, I won't spoil what happens next, but it's suffice to say, that none of the three boys' lives will ever be the same again, when Bolat is suddenly alone, and confronted after school.

The movie also shows how cynical and incompetent the police-force are, after handling the case with the three boys. Hopefully this is not the case in real life as well, but I'm afraid that many countries still accept confessions made under torture, and this movie shows one of the reasons why that is unacceptable.

The director, Emir Baigazin, apparently makes his debut with this film, which just makes it even more impressive. The acting from the kids is pretty good, and many of the images are visually striking throughout the film. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a long career for all of those involved.

This movie is also very good for educational purposes, to show the ill effects of crime and bullying in school, as well as generally portraying life in rural areas of Kazakhstan.

Harmony Lessons is, I think, the first film I have seen from Kazakhstan.

An austere, very dark film about school bullying and retribution taken to an extreme, it seems to take inspiration from the starkness of Bresson, only without the comforting presence of God or redemption anywhere in sight.

At first it demands patience, and seems rootless and disorganized, more slice-of-life than narrative-driven. But one's patience is rewarded - just about no shot or scene, however small or unimportant-seeming at first, isn't followed up on later to become a motif or develop some thematic significance to the overall story. Only once it's finished does it become clear what a carefully constructed and deliberate vision this film is.

The second half of the film in particular lets all the pieces fall smoothly into place, generating a story with an impressive amount of emotional impact. It also makes a nice parallel with the first half.

The film damns cultures of violence that are allowed to breed and self-propagate in isolated rural areas. But it is also unforgiving to those who choose to lash out in violent retribution. Is it not casually that Gandhi is name-dropped during a history lesson at the school.