Bauryna Salu is a rare naturalistic stunner you can approach from two totally different angles. The first is to watch it cold and catch the quiet drama of its icy, wandering central image. The second one is to let Yersultan (incredible Yersultan Yerman), 12-year-old protagonist of the film, guide your eyes in it all you need is a quick look at its synopsis or a peek at the Kazakh title with a flash translation in the opening scene. Only towards the end does “Bauryna Salu” reveal what tradition it belongs to that will be helpful to comprehend what lies beneath. On the way, it offers some of its most vivid and intimate moments with an uncompromising fidelity typical of cinema art form. It looks like a juggling trick every possible emotional possibility is considered although nothing happens at all.
Yersultan was raised by his elderly grandmother (Bigaysha Salkyn) in a rural village where he worked hard, trying to extract salt from evaporated pools of water or take part in ice harvesting (in between helping out at home). The writer-director of the film Askat Kuchinchirekov provides details about the young teenager’s everyday life with a blend of happy and angry moments. Best friend Damir (Damir Daurenuly) playfully attacks Yersultan as they engage in long conversations while wrestling around this is the point nearest to a sense of exuberant freedom among these youngsters in this movie. In some later scenes, Yersultan dreams awake or awakens at night dim sequences filled with visual noise that make silent pauses magnetic as his dissatisfaction is kept out of sight.
In other words, although the viewers are initially unaware of what the movie is about, it is revealed to them later. To be specific, the father (Aidos Auesbay), mother (Dinara Shymyrbay) and younger brother (Yerkin Berikuly) suddenly show up and take him away to their home in another town far from his place of residence. The film got its name from an old nomadic custom also called “Nebere Aluu” whereby a family’s eldest child is given up for adoption within the extended families. It has always been common in big families living in close-knit societies until people started moving away from their places of birth and settling elsewhere; yet, this social standard persisted making it cruel without being spoken.
Like all of the other directors, Kuchinchirekov is also a victim of such tradition and this has made “Bauryna Salu” a self-reflective film that uses nature sounds as its score instead of music hence making it seem like one’s memory. However, he does not give in to the temptation of preaching in order to get rid of his personal demons. Instead, documentarian practices are used as he stages his theater thus enabling him to show how relationships between different characters can be expressed through their own actions rather than speaking through movements or pose rather than words. As a result, this movie feels so real as if it were happening around us now; with its tragic plot line truly depicting the family which is stuck and frozen forever in a kind of cold war mode just by working on their farm; where only silence and contempt are bred for eternity while much love towards horses is shown by an old man who happens to be their father.
In his leading role, Yerman gives an absolutely breathtaking performance whether in total silence and solitude or the few moments when Yersultan is overcome with various pressures at home and school and lets out his hidden anger. “Bauryna Salu” does not only explore the custom which Kuchinchirekov was brought up under but also navigates through an emotional maze that resulted from it, slowly peeling away at the shield of stone-facedness forced upon Yersultan until it crumbles.
For more movies like Bauryna Salu (2023) visit solarmovie.
