Documenting
A Vanishing Way Of Life
T
he 20th International Film Festival of Kerala kicked off with French director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s latest spectacular adventure into the heart of natural world, Wolf Totem. Chosen as China’s foreign-language Oscar entry of 2015, the movie is about the tale of an outsider acclimating to a vanishing way of life. It is an adaptation from the best-seller by Lü Jiamin, whose novel was received as a critique of Chinese modernization and environmental policies. “Wolf Totem's political message feels muddled, though one remains in constant thrall of its stunning cinematography and anthropological attention throughout.” The story concerns Chen Zhen, a student who travels from Beijing to Inner
Mongolia to teach a nomadic tribe of shepherds during the Cultural Revolution. But, it was Chen Zhen who had much to learn from them- about community, freedom, responsibility and life’s existence in the breathtakingly beautiful, yet, harsh wilderness. Entranced with the wolves there - whose behavior inspired Genghis Khan according to the village leader - Chen Zhen adopts a cub and tries to tame the ferociously beautiful creature. But the growing relationship between man and animal as well as the tribe’s ancient ways of life and the land itself is threatened when a central government officer decides to eliminate all wolves from the region at any cost. As Annaud is no stranger in casting
animals in his films, most of the fantastically exciting sequences with wolves - like filming the pack on cliff tops in pouting choreographed ranks or a desperate attempt by the herders to head off a horse stampede in a blizzard - are mostly done in camera instead of CGI, thus making the landscape and painstakingly trained wolves the true stars. “Having made a number of successful fictional films and documentaries about wild animals, Annaud knows how to endow the film's wildlife with both character and realistic intention”, says Oleg Ivanov. Jayasree C.
Festival Director T Rajeevnath, Chaiman KSCA Editorial Board Chairman J Ajith Kumar Convenor Renji Kuriakose Coordinator Jayanthi Narendranath Chief Editor S Rajendran Nair, Secretary KSCA Executive Editor Sadeesh Chalippadam Associate Editor Mammed Montage Assistant Editor TM Hisham Sub Editor Haris Nenmeni Reporters Amala T Chacko, Jayasree C, Keerthana Mannayam Stills Ajay Saga, Shijin V K Design & Layout Shabeer M P Layout Assistant Saeed Fasal Printing Akshara Offset, Thiruvananthapuram Editorial Support Haris Kormath Printed & published by S Rajendran Nair, Secretary, Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, Thiruvananthapuram on behalf of the Department of Cultural Affairs, Govt of Kerala.
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