Khadak

B-

Directed by Peter Brosen's and Jessica Hope Woodworth

Peter Brosen's and Jessica Hope Woodworth's enigmatic "Khadak" is as beautiful as it is confusing, a trippy trek through the Mongolian steppes that is anchored by ravishing sceneries but is significantly weighed down by its own pretentions and incoherences.

Bagi, a young nomad living with his parents on the frigid Mongolian steppes is suddenly informed by local authorities that his cattle has fallen victim to the plague. The authorities force Bagi and his elderly parents to relocate to a nearby village, hastily set up to receive the displaced masses, and then proceed to eradicate the diseased animals. The family finds it difficult to adapt to the new surroundings and Bagi, aimless and jobless, eventually falls in with a group of wandering student performers and falls in love with their beautiful leader, Zolzaya.

As beautiful as Khadak is to look at (and it's gorgeous, to be sure) it simply fails to make much sense, working as a series of nonlinear vignettes that are slapped together and presented to the viewer, covered in a thick layer of symbolism that doesn't seem to carry the story anywhere that it could have gone without it. In the "Making of" presented as part of "Khadak" the narrator claims that "Khadak's" story actually emerges from the film's non-linearity, a cop out if I've ever heard one. The frustrating thing about "Khadak" is that there's a genuinely interesting story lurking behind the murk of many pretentious throwaway scenes. Indeed, "Khadak" hints at an interesting investigation of minority ways of life being trampled underfoot by the unrelenting advance of the free market in the developing world but in the end only allows for a superficial handling of the subject. Likewise, the relationship between Bagi and Zolzaya is not allowed to gain any steam, weighed down by constant detours that detract from the film's core characters. The whole thing feels haphazard at times, as if the directors were given top grade film stock and a green light to capture the beauty of the Mongolian steppes but once they arrived forgot that they needed a story to tell or a script to tell it. That said, "Khadak" really is gorgeous and it's worth a look if nothing more than for the images, captured beautifully by cinematographer Rimvydas Leipus.