After the Apocalypse (2010) & The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2010)

basics...
The Radio Times has picked out a couple of the True Stories documentary film strands on More 4 lately, so I've taken to recording/watching them and found some very interesting stories. The first one I watched was After the Apocalypse which took as its focus the possibly sinister aftermath of Soviet nuclear testing in the Polygon/Semipalatinsk Test Site in remote Kazakhstan. The second followed Joshua Blahyi, known as General Butt Naked during the Liberian civil war of the 1990s, who has become born-again and seeks forgiveness for his horrific acts of bloody violence. 

brilliant...
Neither story is the sort of thing that makes for easy viewing, but both subjects are fascinating, and the way both documentary makers let the people tell the story with no narration allows you to make up your own mind about who to believe or who to forgive. Apocalypse begins with stories of people who have grown up in the Polygon area and they and their children have suffered physical deformities, which they blame on nuclear fallout. However, as the film goes on we meet scientists who cast doubt on the veracity of these claims. But some of these scientists work for the government. So it is difficult to know who to believe, since the officials may have an agenda just as much as the poor families are looking for excuses. What is true is that the treatment of the deformed children, and the expectant mothers, is terrible at the hands of unfeeling health professionals. 

Victims of the Polygon?

In Redemption - which has a title that really draws you in with the expectation of something a little bit salacious - is the more fascinating of the two documentaries. Covering a filming period of months and years, it follows Blahyi as he addresses congregations, meets victims of his brutality, testifies to the Liberian war crimes 'pre-tribunal' and then goes into hiding. The film never asks you to judge Blahyi, but it allows him to explain himself, his past actions and his later search for redemption, and contrasts this with talking heads interviews with historians, ex-gang members and victims' rights campaigners. After admitting to killing not less than 20,000 through his actions in the civil war at the tribunal, Blahyi is exonerated from prosecution while others - including a politician who had killed the ex-Liberian leader - were recommended for trial. It's a shocking admission, a shocking statistic, and an even more shocking outcome. It makes you wonder about the power of forgiveness and whether a person really is capable of such acts of contrition as Blahyi. 

briefly...
Sometimes difficult to watch, yet always fascinating, thought-provoking studies of two terrible periods in the histories of little-discussed countries. I will be watching more True Stories with interest.

Tulpan (2008)

Now there's a label that probably won't appear at the bottom of one of my posts for a while: Kazakhstan. For this is where the movie Tulpan was based and made, on the barren, desert-like steppe region. Curiously, it had a lot in common with a recent movie I've seen, well I say a lot, it included a massive flock of sheep - the difference being that here they weren't rabid killers. And this was not a parody, or a horror. Tulpan is a beautifully shot, simple story about Asa, a young man who his sister and her husband are determined to find a wife for, so that he can get a flock of his own and settle down in a family yurt with a farm. 

I spotted this movie in the Radio Times listings on Film4 a while ago, and thought that the 4 star review they gave it was intriguing, coupled with the fact I've never seen a Kazakh movie, and so I'm glad I took the chance. The glimpse into the Kazakh steppe-dwellers' culture was fascinating, watching the characters make food and tend for sheep, camels and donkeys, and just generally seeing how the different genders and ages interacted. There was a good vein of humour running through, which suprised me, such as when Asa's friend pulls out a poster of Charles and Diana to show to Tulpan's parents that Asa's ears are small compared to the 'American' Prince's. 

Tulpan, which I assume means tulip, although this was expressed explicitly, the character who gives the movie it's title, is only glimpsed a couple of times. She is the girl that Asa tries to be married off too, but she wants to go to the city, whereas Asa's dream is to stay and farm on the steppe. It's a dream that Asa's grumpy brother-in-law thinks will never happen as he doesn't consider Asa much of a farmer. It is Asa however who eventually birthes a live lamb, in a scene that would probably be a bit unsettling to someone who's never grown up on a farm - the actor is quite clearly helping a real sheep give birth to a real lamb, and then he's really giving the new born mouth to mouth. It's a bit grim for Western tastes, but these sheep are clearly these people's only livelihood. 

This tale of Kazakh farmers, unrequited love, and dreams was thought-provoking, touching, flawlessly acted and looked stunning. I hope to see more gems like this over the next few days.