A lovely film pitched as a “fable” from Mongolia ended up being stranger, more conventionally (or is that unconventionally) avant-garde than I’d expected. It riffs on an underlying sense of myth: a young nomadic sheepherder, in the bouts of epilepsy, has visions which lead him to combat the forces of modernity. But from its cold opening onward, the movie works a different kind of magic. A woman in a static shot stares at the camera, a multi-colored abstract mural on the wall behind seeming like some strange kind of halo; after some long gaze she begins (slowly) counting, and as the numbers go up she struggles to maintain her composure, gripped by an inexplicable sadness. I was hooked.
The film is more poem than narrative, and I was engrossed by how its opaque, allusive plot recedes so that the wash and connectivity of the film’s gorgeous imagery carries you along. I can’t remember where I heard about this, but I liked it.