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#2 KHADAK: EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED...
AND THE VILLA OF AUTHORS IS COLOURED IN BLUE
04/09/2006
As recent films have underlined, the destiny of Mongolia is often associated with that of its animals. In Khadak, an invented epidemic touching all cattle allows mining companies to sever herders from their traditions and relocate them in mining towns. All that remains from the past the grandfather describes is its ghost, interiorised by the young hero Bagi through his gift —as if, as the shamanic healing scene reveals, the steppe were now 'within'— as well as by the film itself, which is suffused with a fairy tale-like atmosphere from the very start, when the mother's voice says 'there was a time', a sin-less time when everybody had apples.
Khadak takes us through the looking-glass, for the ethereal universe the shamaness lives in seems to be the only way to escape this unnatural modern world where everything and everyone has to be 'redressed' —thus, the hero is taken from institution to institution, from the quarry to prison via the hospital. Something is wrong, shouts repeatedly one character, hope is gone ('Now has no meaning here') and all that is left to yearn for is death... or epiphany, and that is why Bagy finally resigns completely to his destiny and undergoes, through death, a transsubstantiation allowing him to come back as hope itself.
Thus, as sad as this beautiful film may seem, not only the mischievious grand-father's humour but also the very poetry of the aesthetic treatment of the plot manage to convey the impression that everything is indeed illuminated, and when the screening ends, the memory of the outstanding photographical work continues to haunt us, from the image of the dead horse in the manege or of Bagi crying on a heap of coal that represents the rubble of a world now extinct to the Canaletto-like portraits vivants and the many talismanic Mongolian blue scarves ('khadak') dancing in the wind.
The same scarves which coloured the garden of the Villa of the Authors on Thursday night...
Why did you choose such a prismatic approach, superimposing different realities?
Jessica: Three generations are in this film and they see things differently. The grand-father remembers a time when traditions prevailed, the mother was born during the communist era, and Bagi has inherited his 'sixth sense' from his father, something that the mother and the doctors may see as a curse but which is in fact, as the grand-father sees it, a true gift: when Bagi communicates, in soul, with his new friend Zolzaya, he helps her awakening and shakes off her apathy.
Towards the end, the narrative stops, or rather, resolves itself into an oneiric symphony. Did you know from the beginning that you would end the movie this way?
Peter: Yes, we wanted to rise above the narrative to reach what we believe is sublime.
Jessica:Although this part —which starts when Bagi is under the water and undergoes his transformation, led by the shamaness— is not guided by the plot anymore, this succession of images could not be more linear. When Bagi goes to heaven, as suggests the falling of the khadaks —which not only serve as talisman but also represent many things (the sky, god's judgement on men...) — he provokes a miracle and each image is a specific stage of this process.
How did you pick the DoP who would allow to give free rein to your creativity?
Jessica: We saw three films this Lithuanian DoP did with Sharunas Bartas. We knew Rimvydas Leipus had strong convictions about composition, and we thought he would support our bold choices regarding, for instance, the passing of time —we wanted certain shots to last to allow the spectator to perceive them differently at the beginning and at the end. I have to say that, to find financing, we had to prepare a fake, longer script with many shots which we all cut out afterwards.
Bénédicte Prot (Cineuropa)
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