Beshkempir - Mud Fights & Honey
Quick Thoughts: Beshkempir (1998)
Apologies for the lack of post in the series recently. I have struggled to find a film from Kuwait, and so we have had to move on with hopes of coming back soon. For now, let us continue the...
Made by Aktan Abdykalykov, this is the Kyrgyz film of the series.
Beshkempir, a.k.a The Adopted Son, is a touching coming of age tale that is thematically reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Mirror. In such, it deals with a boy's developing psyche within a feminine domain; a boy emerging from his mother's embrace, from nature's shade. It then establishes a strictly formalised, a uniform, rhythmic and patterned, world of women inside a village that a group of young boy's explore, fight and play in. The boys confront their place in the world alongside their sexuality, and such appears to be a mechanism through which they attempt to imitate the structure given to them by the feminine (their mothers and nature) and then transform it via an active pursuit of a new domain (a male-female relationship beyond mother and son). Many sequences then have a very similar plot that becomes symbolic of such an act of pressing through feminine envelopment and into a new structure that has implications of greater masculine and feminine harmony. Early on, for example, the boys play in mud, caking themselves in the cool sludge before confronting a nest of bees. They then immerse themselves in a symbolically feminine substance, one that is both moist and the earth itself, that which, furthermore, is used to form the clay to make bricks, thus homes. Protected by this substance, they seek adventure, they seek sustenance that is protected by hostility. Our main character, Beshkempir, attempts to join in on this 'game', but is smeared in mud by the boys, bullied; and so like the bees surrounded honey with hostility, so the rabble of kids surround a place in the local social hierarchy with violence and menace. This continues on throughout the film; for example, our main character attempting to secure a girlfriend that the boys then try to steal. This is another sequence that mimics a structure of a feminine embrace being transcended - Beshkempir trying to escape his mother and get a girlfriend. As before, however, Beshkempir must confront hostility that prevents him from moving between the mud and honey, between his mother and a girlfriend, between a isolation and acceptance in the greater community. Such a cycle propagates until Beshkempir loses his grandmother; fatal hostility again buffering a movement from a feminine domain (him living on his grandmother's land) and a new domain (Beshkempir inheriting his grandmother's land). There comes some success in this penultimate challenge, Beshkempir coming to know that he is isolated because he was adopted, but realising that he nonetheless has a place and a family in the village. With this successful transcendence of one female domain comes the emergence of new structure; Beshkempir and the girl he likes come together. They play together with string, creating new structures together. And in such we have life, as mediated by male-female relations, symbolised and dramatised with simple eloquence.
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Apologies for the lack of post in the series recently. I have struggled to find a film from Kuwait, and so we have had to move on with hopes of coming back soon. For now, let us continue the...
Beshkempir, a.k.a The Adopted Son, is a touching coming of age tale that is thematically reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Mirror. In such, it deals with a boy's developing psyche within a feminine domain; a boy emerging from his mother's embrace, from nature's shade. It then establishes a strictly formalised, a uniform, rhythmic and patterned, world of women inside a village that a group of young boy's explore, fight and play in. The boys confront their place in the world alongside their sexuality, and such appears to be a mechanism through which they attempt to imitate the structure given to them by the feminine (their mothers and nature) and then transform it via an active pursuit of a new domain (a male-female relationship beyond mother and son). Many sequences then have a very similar plot that becomes symbolic of such an act of pressing through feminine envelopment and into a new structure that has implications of greater masculine and feminine harmony. Early on, for example, the boys play in mud, caking themselves in the cool sludge before confronting a nest of bees. They then immerse themselves in a symbolically feminine substance, one that is both moist and the earth itself, that which, furthermore, is used to form the clay to make bricks, thus homes. Protected by this substance, they seek adventure, they seek sustenance that is protected by hostility. Our main character, Beshkempir, attempts to join in on this 'game', but is smeared in mud by the boys, bullied; and so like the bees surrounded honey with hostility, so the rabble of kids surround a place in the local social hierarchy with violence and menace. This continues on throughout the film; for example, our main character attempting to secure a girlfriend that the boys then try to steal. This is another sequence that mimics a structure of a feminine embrace being transcended - Beshkempir trying to escape his mother and get a girlfriend. As before, however, Beshkempir must confront hostility that prevents him from moving between the mud and honey, between his mother and a girlfriend, between a isolation and acceptance in the greater community. Such a cycle propagates until Beshkempir loses his grandmother; fatal hostility again buffering a movement from a feminine domain (him living on his grandmother's land) and a new domain (Beshkempir inheriting his grandmother's land). There comes some success in this penultimate challenge, Beshkempir coming to know that he is isolated because he was adopted, but realising that he nonetheless has a place and a family in the village. With this successful transcendence of one female domain comes the emergence of new structure; Beshkempir and the girl he likes come together. They play together with string, creating new structures together. And in such we have life, as mediated by male-female relations, symbolised and dramatised with simple eloquence.
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