ANTI–PENANCE

 

This article is devoting to the 25th anniversary of the release of the movie “The Climbing to Mount Fuji” by Bolot Shamshiev.

 

In the motion picture “The Climbing to Mount Fuji” (1988) one of the classics of Kyrgyz cinema, Bolot Shamshiev assigned primary importance to a problem of moral choice between the truth and the lie, between responsibility and unscrupulousness, between memory and forgetfulness.

The play “The Climbing to Mount Fuji” was written by Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov and Kazakh playwright Kaltai Muhamedjanov at the beginning of the Seventies. It was staged in many theaters in the USSR and foreign countries.

 

The story of the play “The Climbing to Mount Fuji” is special. At the beginning Aitmatov wrote the story line, and then Muhamedjanov wrote the play itself. At the beginning of the Seventies, right after the first night in Moscow Theatre “Sovremennik,” the play began its triumphal journey. It was staged not only in the union republics, but also in Washington, London, and Tokyo. Practically, «The Climbing to Mount Fuji” was performed for more than 30 years. The play brings up common human problems, but every time the theme of friendship, betrayal, and indifference is seen and understood in a new way. It is because every generation has its own court of justice – its own Mount Fuji.

 

 

A chance to shoot a movie, based on Aitmatov-Muhamedjanov’s play, was given only at the end of the Eighties. Creating the film in 1988, Bolot Shamshiev basically kept the story and subject matter of the play. At the same time he introduced certain changes. Problems of moral choice between real truth and lies, between responsibility and unscrupulousness, between memory and forgetfulness; as well as personality cult are the basic content of the film.

 

The shooting of this picture was very complicated and uppermost so technically. Although the film was shot in one specific place during several months, its screen time tells a story that happens during twenty-four hours. The film crew had to support constant meteorological conditions, therefore the director of photography Murat Aliev and his assistants were whitening the background with the help of smoke, they had to change light saturation of the frame, because the action of the film began early in the morning and finished in twilight. In the mountains, as it is known, the sky is always blue and as soon as the smoke, created by Aliev’s assistants dispersed, faces of the actors would become red and then again the filming crew would start working the magic for the background.

 

It is the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic.

Time of action is the middle of the Fifties, the period of dethronement of Stalin’s personality cult.

Scene of action is not a high mountain, which the characters affectionately call Fujiyama. They used to like climbing to the peak of it from their school days and fix some recreation activities, talking with each other after forced periods of alienation. This is a group of friends, classmates and their elderly female teacher.

 

This time friends decide to be extremely frank with each other though, because epochal events are taking place in the society: everybody is in shock, but at the same time, a spirit of renewal is up in the society. A period of warming came to the society.

 

So our characters are like that. All the years of Stalin’s rule, they supposedly were keen on committing sins and then, finally, came the time of penance, when all are shedding all visible decency and openly confess their sins.

 

It turns out, that there is not even one decent person among them! The only one, who was decent, died during the Second World War.

 

This is what the elderly teacher is thinking about with terror.

 

She is reproaching herself and criticizes herself: “That means that the life was spent for nothing, all of my pupils, except for one, are unworthy people. Therefore, I myself am not a worthy woman, and I made a mistake, when I chose this responsible profession of a teacher.”

 

“I don’t deserve existing in this land of the living!” – This is what she probably thought, when she was leaving her pupils. Suddenly, as if from nowhere – a whirling flow of blowing dust moves huge boulders, one of them rushes down and knocks the elderly woman down. She dies.

 

It seems that her thought about her uselessly wasted life materializes and therefore a dreadful dust storm unexpectedly appears, and it is able to move an enormous stone, which, rolling down, knocks the lady down and kills her eventually.

 

This is very much in the tradition of people of the East. I remember Chinghiz Aitmatov’s novel and its screen version by Karen Gevorkian “The Piebald Dog, Running by the Shoreline of the Sea,” as well as Jamshed Usmonov, a Tajik director’s film “The Angel at the Right side.” Elderly people, understanding that in order to extend, or rather, to save the lives of the younger members of their families, it would be better to free the space from their existence. Therefore they would virtually voluntarily go to a better world (the Grandfather does this in “The Piebald Dog…,” the Mother in “The Angel at the Right side”). They die in the name of the future.

 

In “The Climbing to Mount Fuji,” the elderly woman thinks about her departure, burning with shame, though.

 

Later, something had gone wrong with my visual memory. Or the scene of death of this woman had shaken me so that in my memory this scene is imprinted like the following: a huge boulder is rolling down and knocking the teacher off her feet. The boulder itself was moved by strong blows of wind, which had raised a fierce dust storm around. I saw this movie only once, some ten years ago.

 

Though my colleagues tell me that mystique is totally excluded, they say it was my imagination that has broken loose. Everything was different on the screen.

 

The disappointed teacher quietly, without being noticed, starts to go away from her agitated former pupils. They are quite drunk now. They start to argue more fiercely and start to throw stones at each other.

 

One of the stones flies in the direction of the teacher.

 

The stone hits her head. She dies.

 

Yes, normally, I see a bit more than a director is showing me. It happens that sometimes I see even those things, which a director never intended to show. Then all the thoughts, feelings, worry, of which heroes might not talk about, but think about; all are gathered into one thing in my imagination. It seems to me, that by playing the role of the teacher, the great Kyrgyz actress Sabira Kumushalieva really was praying to the God about an early death for her character as of salvation, for she was very ashamed for the pupils she had educated. It is probable that she, playing that character of a teacher, prayed to God about a horrible death from a big boulder, rather than being hit on the head by a stone. Who knows, today Sabira Kumushalieva is not with us, and the secret of this mystical riddle the actress had taken with her to the better world.

 

From the other hand, Bolot Shamshiev foretold exactly, that ungrounded aggression on the primary, everyday life level will become a reason of all acute, painful and unsolvable problems of the modern Kyrgyz society.

After the first screenings of “The Climbing to Mount Fuji,” many experts tried to compare it with Tengiz Abuladze’s “The Penance,” which was filmed before Perestroika, but was released in the cinema theaters of the USSR in 1987, momentarily becoming a signature film, giving hope that Glasnost will help Soviet people to overcome fear. Shamshiev replied in the following way: “I already happened to hear about attempts to compare “The Mount Fuji” with “The Penance” of Abuladze in its thematic plan. Maybe it is so. Although I think that here we have a somewhat different variant. Our characters do not want and, perhaps are not able to repent. They are of that breed of people, who “can not give up their principles.” I can understand confusion, pain and bitterness of people, who agonizingly do not want to give up their myths; people who are asking each other with bewilderment and despair: “How come? Did we waste our lives for nothing?” people lived, worked and fought with the name of Stalin, but they didn’t see monstrous lies and Pharisaic nature of the “beloved Father and a friend.” They were living among terrors of inquisition and thought it was the way it supposed to be. At the beginning we wanted to abstract away to the limit, to make this thing as if out of time and space, underlining by this the idea of generality. But Chinghiz Aitmatov was against it, he suggested making the film in a realistic key. Eventually, we came to a compromise – although the film is a realistic one, but it is somehow above realism. This is transformed poetic cinema.”(1)

“The Climbing to Mount Fuji”

Kyrgyzstan, 1988, full-length film, 35mm., feature

Production: T.Okeiev “Kyrgyzfilm” National Film Studio

Based on the novel of the same name, written by Chinghiz Aitmatov and Kaltai Mukhamejanov

Directed by Bolot Shamshiev

Director of photography – Murat Aliev

Starring: Sabira Kumushalieva, Aiturgan Temirova, Gulsara Ajibekova

 

Gulbara Tolomushova

Translator - Nourghiz Chekilova

 

It was a fragment fron the book: "The Unknown New Wave of Central Asian Cinema" - please open here