Just got a DVD of this film and immediately watched it. Came to this website to specifically leave a review - first time ever on IMDb.
I really liked this film. Maybe because I am a man and there is plenty of nudity in this movie. Especially the girl, she is gorgeous and sexy.
This movie is torturing the viewer until he doesn't believe what's that he's seeing anymore. Of course, in order to understand some particular points in the film you have to be a native kazakh or something, but foreigners can roughly guess what things are happening. Watching Mongol, Ulzhan and Tulpan before is highly recommended though.
The overall feeling of life is prevailing throughout the movie and I think I managed to grasp the author's intension that is to show the supposed intensity of values spurring out naked both physically and emotionally. Those things are just way to hidden or simplified in our ultramodern society of radical relationships. Well, understandably reversible though through a modernist argument that we all love, oblivious it is. The unending life grimness is exposed in a virtually viral circle of being, centred on female conservationism as a glance through the inevitable struggle and pain.
What's even more realistic, and may seem somewhat unorthodox for a western viewer, is that characters' behaviour seems to be too locked down, given the sea of possibilities on an unpopulated land.
Some remarks about the overall film quality. Some places are awkwardly done and really are not possible to comprehend luring the viewer to assume shamanism while there is really not much of it here. I think some moments actually requiring actors to act were garbled (i don't think that it was intensional) leaving all the work to the operator. The emotions shown were good though, although I don't think that they were hard to be generated.
All in all, good movie, worth watching and doesn't require you to know any kazakh because it has no words. Has lots of nice views and generally a pleasure to watch.
