Leçons d'harmonie

-- 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 --

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.

"Harmony Lessons" - is a leisurely, or rather very slow film. Its slowness is expressed in the complete absence of dynamics, a huge part of the frames are shot from the background, Aslan is constantly silent, there is almost no music in the film and the only thing we can hear in many scenes is the sounds of the environment. And the beauty of this film is that this slowness is perfect for it. Everything in the film works for understanding. Calm shots, often arranged in geometrically precise figures, the absence of music, Aslan's silence - all this creates the harmony that is so important for the main character; these directorial techniques complement the dramaturgy of the picture and help to accurately understand the film.

Here all the techniques work like gears in a watch. "Chekhov's Gun," which always fires in this film, is a subtle work with the viewer's emotions. Baigazin used a storytelling technique when they talk about something in lesson scenes, and in the following scenes the viewer is shown how it resonates with reality.

Aslan's dreams and many subtle details in the frames help to understand his desire for purity.

Baigazin did a titanic job; this is a film in which the plot cannot be considered separately from the director's work - everything in this film works for each other. The narrative is told not only through the plot, but also through various directorial techniques, which adds interest.

The denouement of the film is surprising, and in the second part even the scenes change in construction.

In conclusion, I want to say that "Harmony Lessons" - perfect, but hard to watch movie.

10/10.

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.

Deeply disturbing and morally complex tale of bullying, intimidation and fear among teenage school boys in rural Kazakhstan. Beautifully shot and very well acted by a non-professional cast.

Filmmaker Baigazin makes the film more challenging in a good way by making our 'hero' – a very hard to read teen named Aslan – a boy clearly on the edge of losing it, disconnected from other people and given to torturing bugs. So while we root for him to stand up to the bullies making his life miserable, we are also very aware that he could lash out and explode as easily as he could simply fight back, making him more anti-hero than hero, and adding a sense of tension and dread that goes far beyond the many films we've all seen on similar subjects.

The opening scene captures this beautifully (and chillingly). We see Aslan playing in the snow with a family sheep, chasing it while laughing. It's a happy, bucolic image. Then suddenly he has the sheep on the ground and is cutting it's throat and butchering it, his face betraying no emotion of any kind. It's one of the more powerful first few minutes of a film I've seen in quite a while, and speaks to the intense tensions explored in the movie.

There are missteps. For example, for me the film pushes the gross out factor more than it needs to – from the butchering of that sheep that goes on at some length in intense detail, to the many scenes of characters throwing up (at least some of which is clearly real), etc it sometimes feels like the film is working much harder than it needs to shock, in a way that took me out of the story (there's plenty that's shocking enough in simply the events of the story). And there are some logic and other questions not always well answered.

But overall this is a strong tale of the very dark side of adolescence and how the adult world deals with it told with style and a helping of dark humor. Call it Kazakhstan's answer to "If….".

Frustratingly, as of this writing, despite excellent reviews and many awards world-wide (not to mention a universal basic subject) , this is not available in the US on disc, streaming or download.