Berlin Film Review: ‘Öndög’

At the very end of Wang Quan’an’s enchanting seventh feature, a droll title appears: “Based on True Stories.” It’s amusing because it’s unnecessary; this is the kind of cinema that makes its stories true by telling them, that puts eccentric, real, cyclical life — calf births and lamb slaughters — before its camera and generously transforms it into drama, character, plot, and theme. Starring a cast of first-timers of unfakable authenticity and a series of stunning Mongolian skies, “Öndög” (Mongolian for “egg”) is an art-house proposition to be sure, but within those rarefied confines deserves exposure as vast as the windswept Mongolian steppe against which it slowly burns, sending up a column of smoke that can be seen for miles.

Marking Wang’s fourth appearance in the Berlin competition, “Öndög” also marks a welcome return to the intimacy (and brevity) of his Mongolia-set 2007 Golden Bear winner “Tuya’s Marriage” after 2011’s more epic but less successful literary adaptation “White Deer Plain.” And coincidentally, it finds the director competing against fellow Chinese Golden Bear recipient Zhang Yimou, in what could be billed as a face-off between China’s most revered Fifth Generation filmmaker and Wang, something of an outlier from its Sixth.

The simple but resonant story’s offbeat tone is established early as two offscreen voices casually shoot the breeze, the camera providing their POV through the windshield of a moving vehicle. Aside from the infinitesimally graduated dusk-blue horizon, all that’s visible is the few feet of grass and scrub in front of the bouncing Jeep’s front fender. But just when we’re lulled into the rhythm of a long, uneventful car journey, the wonky arc of the headlamps illuminates a dreamlike horror: the body of a naked woman, lying in the middle of all this nowhere, unmistakably dead.

It is actually a police vehicle that has happened on this crime, and so the scene seems set for a rural murder mystery with ethnographic flourishes, à la “39 Steppes” perhaps, or a brooding, Ceylan-esque “Once Upon a Time in Mongolia.” But Wang’s interest lies more with the mysteries of life than of death, and so the crime is solved offscreen, and we stay in the dark with the 18-year-old rookie (Norovsambuu Batmunkh) left to keep watch over the body. He is not entirely abandoned to the lowering temperatures and the circling wolves: A colleague wraps a scarf around his neck, and a herdswoman on camelback (Dulamjav Enkhtaivan), who’s handy with her rifle, is drafted into helping him out.

Nicknamed “Dinosaur,” she has her own business to attend to — the herding of the animals, the killing of a sheep for meat, the contemplative smoking of a cigarette — but eventually she returns and over a canteen of soup and a bottle of hooch, a drunken, companionable seduction occurs. This is despite the persistent devotion of a herdsman (Aorigeletu) who stops by to help Dinosaur whenever she calls, and the pretty young intern back at the police station, on whom the police officer has a crush. It’s so bitterly windy out here that it can be tricky to get your cigarette lit, but the torches carried by its lovelorn characters seem never go out.

Even those for whom the storytelling is just too slow will have to admit that “Öndög” is a fabulous portfolio piece for Beijing-based French cinematographer Aymerick Pilarski, through whose rapturous lens we fall in love with the magnificent airy expansiveness of the Mongolian countryside. In laconic long takes, often placed far away from the swaddled-up characters, Pilarski always finds a surprising frame, whether it’s a gargantuan sky with only a sliver of land beneath or an interior sex scene that becomes an abstraction of panting shapes lit only by LED flashlights.

But then, there’s so much that is surprising here, not least the nonjudgmental attitude toward sex and Wang’s undisguised admiration for Dinosaur, a woman living contentedly alone 100 kilometers from anyone else. We might expect a place of such tribal ancientness to be less than progressive, but “Öndög” is built on the unexpected collision between tradition and modernity: a satellite dish is balanced up against the side of Dinosaur’s yurt; the young officer keeps boredom at bay by dancing to tinny music from his cellphone; and a herdswoman patiently undoes all her layers to use a home pregnancy test.

But though the film is largely conveyed through faraway images, often edged with Beckettian absurdity, of novice actors given little dialogue and few closeups, the small miracle is that we come to know the shape of the heart that beats in each character’s breast. All the gorgeous twilights, newborn calves, and dead bodies aside, this is ultimately a wise little folktale about the notion that to love someone is to set them free, while carefully nurturing the flickering flame of hope that maybe they’ll come back to you.

Berlin Film Review: 'Öndög'

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (competing), Feb. 7, 2019. Running time: 97 MIN.

Production:(Mongolia) A Light Arts Films, New Theatre Union, Landi Studios, Mogo Film Labs production. (Int’l sales: Arclight, Los Angeles.) Producer: Wang Quan’an. Co-Producers: Ji Wenwen, Ruan Xiao, Wang Changrui, Chang Wenxian, Jeancy Xu Jingchun, Executive producers: Byambatsogt Dashnyam, Ying Ye, Yuan Hui.

Crew:Director, screenplay: Wang Quan’an. Camera (color, widescreen): Aymerick Pilarski. Editor: Wang Quan’an, Yang Wenjian.

With:Dulamjav Enkhtaivan, Aorigeletu, Norovsambuu Batmunkh, Gangtemuer Arild. (Mongolian dialogue)

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