In the program brochure the film is
defined as a documentary, which is hard for me to believe, unless I
recall the wonderful films by one of the key figures of the New Wave
of Hong Kong cinema, Allen Fong, narrative films based on true
biographies and mostly casted with the real protagonists. The borders
of documentary and narrative cinema were suspended.
This film takes place in Tibet, a
country occupied by China. First of all this film represents cinema
as the “art of seeing” which evokes not only the early films by
Wim Wenders but also the masterpieces by Hou Hsiao Hsien from the
1980s and 1990s. Gyals film is also an invitation to dive for 94
minutes into another world, another culture and another geography.
The story is quick told. We have a man, his wife and their little
daughter Yangchan. They are farmers with a small flock of sheep. They
move to their summer camp for cultivate grain from what their live is
depending on. The grandfather is a monk, now near the end of his life
and now living like an hermit. Yangchan´s father has a bad
reputation in the village because he refuses to visit his old and
sick father. Later the film reveals the father´s motivation: years
before the old man refuses to fulfill the last wish of his dying
wife, Yangchans grandmother.
One of the most important protagonists
is here the land scape, a sparse solitude. The film uses often
extreme panorama shots where the few people either nearly disappear
or where they seem like nothing more than beings almost grown from
it.
The flock of sheep is often endangered
by wolves, the summer camp mostly exposed to this climate of snow,
rain and thunderstorms. The people are not talking very much – or
in better words, the gestures and their faces are talking a lot. Men,
animals and this incredible land scape seem to belong together,
different branches from the matter of the world. Nature is slightly
interpreted by the believe of men.
Yangchan is often teased by other kids.
This one of these films where seemingly very few happens but as the
film proceeds it turns into an amazing experience. We get a taste of
a human life so concrete planted in this piece of the world – an
experience only cinema can evoke.
Gtsngbo is a film which does not impose
itself to be more than an image of the world and we are only
temporary guests in this world which seems to exists independent from
our view. That is exactly a hint to the greatness of this film. The
film offers hardly any drama but in its consequence it offers the
matter dramas are made of.
Yangchan feels abandoned, the parents
can´t spend much time with her. The mother is pregnant again and has
to wean Yangchan. One night a wolf kills a sheep. Yangchan gets
friendly with the orphaned lamb. Later we witness again
thunderstorms and the death of the lamb caused again by the wolves
which remain invisible in this film like an uncanny power of nature.
The film´s point of view seems to be in accordance with this
landscape and the stoicism of its characters. In the last shot this
beautiful piece of a film becomes almost an unmoved frame which tells
a lot about the relationship of the characters. On the left side we
see the father in some distance to his father and the girl at the
right edge of the frame. The father-son conflict remains unsolved –
in other words – it is not our business anymore, because we are
dismissed into the black of the credits.
The miracle of Gtsngbo is that we got a
glimpse of this strange world but we also leave this world with the
strange sensation that it will go on to exist long after the film is
finished and even long after the film becomes a fleeting memory for
us.
Gtsnbo is a wonderful introduction to
the wonder of cinema.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Screenings:
Thur, Feb 12, Haus Der Kulturen der
Welt, 13.00
Sun, Feb 15, Cinemaxx 3 14.00
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