Otyrardyń kúıreýi: a Cassandra tale of power and pride

Unju (Doha Qydyralıev) in Otyrardyń kúıreýi

One of the seminal pieces of independent Kazakh cinema is the 1991 Otyrardyń kúıreýi (Отырардың күйреуі, The Fall of Otrar), directed by Ardak Ámirqulov. A sprawling, nearly three-hour-long historical epic, filmed mostly in black and white with a few sparse splashes of colour, Otyrardyń kúıreýi narrates, from a Qypshaq point of view, the fall of the city of Otyrar in Horezm to the Mongols under Sh‎yńǵys Han. This story also serves in part as the basis for Jin Yong’s historical wuxia novel The Eagle-Shooting Hero, but Ámirqulov’s focus is very different than Jin Yong’s.

Jin Yong, at least when he was writing the first book in that trilogy, was doing so from the perspective of a patriot, and his characters – particularly Guo Jing and Huang Rong – are exemplars of heroism. On the other hand, a certain wan pessimism hovers over the heroisms of the characters in Otyrardyń kúıreýi. The indubitable bravery and self-sacrifice of the main character, Unju (Doha Qydyralıev), is repeatedly met by his own shah with mockery, disbelief and a series of cruel tortures. And when Unju’s lord Qaıyr Han, the governor of Otyrar (Tuńǵyshbaı Jamanqulov), who basically sacrificed Unju politically to Shah Muhammad (Ábdýráshit Mahsudov) to save his own skin, is forced into making a brave stand from the walls of his city against the mighty and wrathful Shyńǵys Han (Bolot Beıshenalıev), we already know – or can easily guess – the doom awaiting him and his son. One scene in particular demonstrates Ámirqulov’s fatalistic outlook. One lone Qypshaq hero rides out from Otyrar to a single combat with a Mongol knight as Qaıyr Han watches from the walls; the Mongol taunts him about how he is about to die. Instead of the honourable joust the Qypshaq is expecting, though, four other Mongols ride up behind him, shoot him in the back with an arrow, lasso him from his horse and drag him in the dust behind them.

The entire film is shot in black and white, with only occasional sploshes of colour thrown in for effect, particularly around blood and fire, lending the film its epic – and at times dreamlike – quality. The cinematography choices (and, indeed, the sets) are deliberately claustrophobic, as though we are watching from the point-of-view of a prisoner or a victim of circumstance – much of the action in the first half of the film takes place in dungeons, cramped courtyards, halls, bedchambers, houses and crowded streets. The camera forces us to watch as various bodily tortures and executions are visited upon the victims of state violence – burning, branding, crucifixion, impalement, tongue-cutting. The world shown to us in Otyrardyń kúıre‎‎ýi is uncompromisingly cruel. Only a few brief glimpses of kindness and redemption that are shown to us, and these are emphatically not the result of brave last stands. In the end, only the weapons of the weak seem to be effective, and what little grace there is appears to be arbitrary.

Unju, the noble, selfless and brutally-honest Qypshaq ‘arrow of Allâh’ who served seven years as a scout among the Mongols, spends most of the film attempting to warn his superiors about the Mongol threat, but – like the Cassandra of distant Greek antiquity – he is constantly disbelieved, and he is subject to various tortures and punishments as a result. (The queen mother, who apparently owed Unju a favour, takes a different tack: telling him to save himself by lying, then sending him a Chinese girl to sleep with while keeping guards and spies posted around him.) Despite all this ill-use, even ending up exiled and stripped of his warrior rank because of his persistence, Unju keeps coming back to Qaıyr Han and Otyrar to try to save his people from their own destruction. We get to see the people he cares most about – in particular his old Russian servant who still dreams of going free.

But Shah Muhammad and Qaıyr Han continue to be guided primarily by an overbearing pride. They not only fail to heed Unju, but they also repeatedly antagonise and continually underestimate Shyńǵys Han: first by ransacking the home of his caravan-merchant Yalbach (Záýirbıı Zehov); then by seizing the caravan itself, which Qaıyr Han is shown to do not out of greed but out of defiance against the Mongol leader; and finally by killing one of Sh‎yńǵys Han’s envoys and branding the other two. A war seems inevitable as Qaıyr Han is sent back to see to Otyrar’s defences. Much of the latter half of the movie treats the siege and sack of Otyrar itself. One really has to admire, despite the washed-out, sepia-toned black-and-white choice of production, the technical side: the props – horses, weapons, armour, blood, pyrotechnics – and effects that clearly went into this hour-long epic battle scene.

Because this film is historical epic, and also about as true to actual historical detail as one can reasonably expect from a film adaptation, we already know how it ends. But strangely enough, despite our basically following the perspective of Unju from the beginning and not really having reasons to feel any sympathy for Qaıyr Han (a cruel and cowardly tyrant for most of the film), toward the middle and the end he starts to take on a more human aspect, particularly toward his son whom he clearly loves. Also, despite his tyrannical order – and gruesome example – to cut out the tongues of any in Otyrar who murmur that Allâh has turned against him after the mosque falls, we start to sympathise more with the man himself. At the end, as Qaıyr Han himself takes up a sword, berates his dead troops and fights a one-man last stand, we can’t help but be dismayed when the Mongols capture him and drag him before Sh‎yńǵys Han to meet the end he’s earned. He is killed by having molten silver poured onto his face in a death-masque.

We at last see Unju riding through the ruins of his city, and he finds his old Russian servant, who was at the gates when the Mongols rode in. He lived because the Mongols thought he was the one who opened the gates, and they gave him a gold tablet they used to recognise their agents. He gave this tablet to a blind young Qypshaq girl who lived near Unju’s house, so she could save herself. Unju visits the ruins of a mosque and mulls over the irony that he was ready to be martyred for Otyrar but ended up surviving; and that Qaıyr Han who sought to save his own skin was martyred for his city anyway.

There is a fatalism and a definite undertone of political subversion to this film – notable particularly in the treatments of the court of the sadistic, torture-happy Shah and of Qaıyr Han’s heavy-handed despotism – that mark it out as a product of very late-Soviet glasnost’. It’s as though Ámirqulov fancied himself able to see the writing on the wall, and the result is a surprisingly-thoughtful meditation on timeless political realities. In an additional twist of irony – it’s very clear from the film that if Ámirqulov ever considered himself a patriot, it was in a starkly-realist sense, without any romantic or idealistic illusions – the grim political end he foresaw in his parable-laden treatment of his homeland’s distant history, marked the decisive creative beginning of a national cinematic vernacular for an independent Kazakhstan. The only complaint I have with Otyrardyń kúıreýi is that the copy I watched was overdubbed in Russian; and I’m not a particular fan of that method. However, it’s nonetheless a uniquely powerful film, and very easy to see why Otyrardyń kúıreýi is considered a masterpiece and a touchstone of Kazakh cinema; and also why it was particularly beloved by Martin Scorsese. This film can be pretty hard to take, but it is definitely worth the nearly three-hour sit-down time.