Qosh bol, Gúlsary: for the love of a horse

Tanabaı (Doha Qydyralıev) and Gúlsary in Qosh bol, Gúlsary

Ardak Ámirqulov, the Kazakh New Wave auteur who directed the sublimely psychedelic period drama Otyrardyń kúıreýi in 1991, teams up again with his commanding lead actor from that movie, Doqtyrbek ‘Doha’ Qydyralıev, in his 2008 film Qosh bol, Gúlsary (‘Farewell, Gulsary’), which is based on the famous Chyńgyz Aıtmatov novel of the same name. Apart from Doha’s spirited performance as the aging Kyrģyz soldier Tanabaı, this film unfortunately shows little of Ámirqulov’s former brilliance and subtlety. Ámirqulov tells Aıtmatov’s tragic story of Tanabaı and his beloved stallion Gúlsary in an almost polemic fashion – at the expense, it sometimes seems, of artistry. It is a much smaller film, and one which doesn’t quite earn its 98-minute runtime.

Warning: spoilers below.

Ámirqulov tells Aıtmatov’s story of Tanabaı and his beloved stallion Gúlsary through a series of flashbacks when Tanabaı (Doha Qydyralıev) is an old man and leading Gúlsary and a cart along the road toward a destination that will be Gúlsary’s last. We learn through his flashbacks that Tanabaı returned home from the Great Patriotic War together with his friend Choro (Nurlan Sanjar), to be rewarded with money and a Communist Party membership. He subsequently breaks in a stubborn young stallion and buys him. Tanabaı discovers a mutual attraction between himself and the young woman (Jánel Maqajanova) he buys the horse from, and they begin to have an affair. This causes some strain between him and his supportive wife Jaıdar (Raıhan Aıtqojanova). However, after Tanabaı wins a race with Gúlsary, the horse attracts the covetous eye of the local Communist Party boss, and Tanabaı is forced to part – reluctantly – with his beloved horse.

The horse runs away from his new owner twice, and Tanabaı discovers that its owner is using the wrong kind of saddle on it, and keeping it in iron fetters that make its hooves bleed. On top of this, when the stallion continues to be uncooperative, the new owner has him castrated. This mistreatment of his horse grieves and angers Tanabaı, to say the least. The government forces the old farmsteads to consolidate, leading to an awkward situation where Tanabaı is living together with both his wife and his girlfriend, who help around the farm. He is forced to ask the government for supplies, which do not arrive in time – his barn floods, killing off most of the newborn lambs and a few of the sheep in his flock. There is one particularly telling scene where Tanabaı and his son are trying to get a mother ewe to nurse one of the surviving young that is not her own, and she won’t do it; Tanabaı blames his son and strikes him. The boss tries to force Tanabaı and his family onto a sovkhoz, but the veteran, at the end of his tether, strikes the boss down off his horse with a pitchfork and proceeds to beat him up in front of Choro. The matter is brought to the local Party leader, and Choro – along with several other members of his village – votes to expel Tanabaı from the Party, ending their friendship. In the end, Tanabaı is exiled from his village. His wife dies – the result of an accident in the disrepaired barn – and his girlfriend is shipped off to a sovkhoz. After Tanabaı’s exile is over, we see him together leading Gúlsary on his last ride.

End spoilers.

When Chyńgyz Aıtmatov wrote his novel, it is probably fair to say that he did have a critical eye toward how the traditional lifeways of the Kyrģyz people were changing. Nonetheless, Ámirqulov puts together something that is far more than critical – and also quite a bit less. With a leading man like Qydyralıev, it’s little wonder that masculinity becomes a key thematic preoccupation. In Otyrardyń kúıreýi, the cinematography often lingers on the pantherine grace of Unju’s body, whether dressed or undressed, and his facial expressions and dialogue are indicative of a feral, predatory beauty and cunning. Ámirqulov clearly wanted his hero in that movie to represent the quintessence of Kazakh martial virtue and strength – and then to present the insufficiency of even that when subjected to the vagaries of gæopolitical power politics and the brutal alien wrath of the Great Khan.

Here, on the other hand, we see an aging Tanabaı – unlike Unju, his fighting days are behind him – similarly rendered helpless by political forces beyond his control. The tragœdy of Tanabaı mirrors that of his horse. Just as his horse is misprised, mishandled and ultimately castrated by a callous Party boss, so too the Party finds little use for Tanabaı’s temper or his talents in peacetime, and just as effectively and just as coldly emasculates him. The cinematic language is quite blunt on this point. Four people are needed to restrain Gúlsary before he can be ‘snipped’; and near the end of the film four police tackle Tanabaı off his horse, beat him and put him in chains to send him into exile. The juxtaposition and contrast between Tanabaı and Choro couldn’t be any more blunt, either: living in the countryside we see Tanabaı at his best and most physically-fit, while the meagre, bespectacled Choro suffers from a cough that overtakes him when he’s out of doors.

As with Otyrardyń kúıreýi and Ulzhan, I watched this film in the original Kazakh language without the benefit of subtitles. Even so, the story was fairly intuitive to follow. The cinematography showed a few flashes of brilliance, but despite a few wide-angle shots of the steppe, the film was a bit claustrophobic. That may or may not have been intentional. Also, the beauty shots of the horses, which seem to be a necessity in any film featuring a fine horse like Gúlsary, were a little bit lacking. The music wavered back and forth between traditional Kazakh fiddles and drums, and jazz music which would have been appropriate to the Soviet fifties and sixties. To be honest, both in the cinematography and in the building of the story, it felt a little insubstantial: like a made-for-TV movie, made needlessly turgid by the requirements of a full-length feature.

I did appreciate Doha Qydyralıev’s acting chops in this one. Whether bearded or clean-shaven, Doha’s face can say a lot without him having to open his mouth. Alternatively, he can chew scenery with the very best of them: Tanabaı’s rages at the forces which cage him in are palpable and plausible. The friendship between him and Choro didn’t really ring ‘true’ until one flashback near the end, and so his falling-out with Choro before then didn’t carry a lot of weight – but that’s not as much an issue with the acting as with the choice of how that sequence was edited. I won’t say that Qosh bol, Gúlsary is a bad movie. It’s not. But it does watch like a one-off public television rendition of a classic novel, which is a bit less than what a filmmaker of Ámirqulov’s talents should aim for.