In our hectic world, there are (and there always have been) human beings who feel the urge to break away from the crowd, to flee the superficiality or the tyranny of the society they live in so as to find themselves (or, in some cases, find back themselves) in the middle of unspoiled nature. A very romantic idea indeed though finding yourself in survival conditions is not easy as pie, the proof being that only the toughest (the likes of Thoreau, Jack London, Thor Heyerdahl, Jon Krakauer...) manage to make their dream of purity come true. In France one of our boldest adventurers, Sylvain Tesson, is one of those who not only heeded the call but also succeeded in living six months in Siberia, on the shore of Lake Baikal to be more accurate. Not just the guy next door, Tesson is the kind of people who have ants in the pants, always in for an extreme experience, always on his way, whether on foot, on horseback, on a bike or a motorbike, whether in Iceland, in the Himalaya, in Kazakhstan or anywhere in the world . He even loves climbing monuments or private buildings without safety gear, which is not without risks as illustrated by his ten meter fall from the château he was staying at in 2014. To get back to the point, Tesson recorded his Siberian experience in a book published in 2011, "The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Siberian Taiga".
An unexpected chain of events then started to unfold, which would eventually lead to the present film adaptation : somewhere in India (light years away from Siberia as it were!), where he found himself, Safy Nebbou, a film director living in France but born in the South of Algeria (a hot place, if there is one !) read the book, fell in love with it and decided that he WOULD transpose it to the screen, come hell or high water. And by dint of determination and obstinacy, Nebbou ended up managing to make this "insane" project come to life.
Naturally persistence is one thing but making an entertaining show of a man alone living secluded in a cabin... is another. The point was: how to avoid boredom with so little narrative challenge? Safy Nebbou thought the problem over and found a way out: the addition of a new character, whose main virtue would be allowing Teddy (Sylvain Tesson's screen substitute) not only to talk to himself but to have dialogues, not only to be self-absorbed but to develop a relationship, thus adding narrative impetus to a story working well on paper but less so on film. A choice disapproved by a couple of demanding critics but not by moviegoers who, through word of mouth, made the film a success. Even Sylvain Tesson himself thought it a right move.
That being so, "Dans les forêts de Sibérie", gives you the impression – and a pleasant one at that – to see two different films on the run. The first part mainly partakes of the documentary : the views of the frozen lake and of its surroundings, intensified by Gilles Porte's gorgeous cinematography, are outstanding. Also documentary-like is the way Nebbou shows us Teddy trying and managing to go through the days of his new life : how he deals with solitude, with finding food (how this man of the town learns hunting in the taiga and fishing through an opening in the ice, toileting in a sauna and going out naked in the cold (which gives rise the best scene of the movie, both comic and scary, showing a bear threaten the poor defenseless Teddy), and so on... The second part, with the introduction of Aleksei, is much less meditative and a little more action-based. It also noticeable for its psychological rightness. The friendship that develops between the two outsiders is believable and their relationships more and more moving as the story progresses. Add to that a score by Ibrahim Maalouf, interpreted by him on his inimitable trumpet, at times lyrical when the character is elated, at others beautifully melancholic, and you will have an more complete idea of the atmosphere the film is wrapped in.
On the whole, this is quite a worthwhile and, even if it does not carry you away like "Dersu Uzala" or "Into the Wild", "Dans les forêts de Sibérie" proves thought-provoking, has a real sense of nature and is boosted by the inspired performance of its main actor, Raphaël Personnaz, incredibly thoroughly in character. Recommended for all those reasons.
