QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
The director of 2024’s Grand Prix (the event’s top prize) winner at the Tallinn Black Nights Silent City Driver returns to the capital of Estonia with yet another profoundly solemn and lyrical movie dotted with symbolisms, about very different people bonding in their solitude. The story takes place in the filmmaker’s native Mongolia. In the most sparsely populated country in the world, the distances are so great that locals experience both physical and emotional isolation.
Bayar (B. S. Bayinerile) was once a famous painter. He enjoyed a long European stint – mostly in Paris – as well as widespread recognition for his work. At least that’s what the few pictures and mementos in his studio suggest. He’s now an ageing man – aged roughly 60 – with a small child and an estranged wife. These two characters only feature briefly in his memories of the past, and in a telephone conversation. Bayar describes himself as “a bad father”. His most loyal companion is a white female Labrador called Dolingor. But even that connection isn’t that strong. We later learn that the bitch belongs to his neighbours (which are never to be seen).
A group of attentive Japanese tourists photograph his largest creation just as the artist is working on it. He paints a large, red and abstract drawing to the wall of a warehouse. A female interpreter (L. Gegeenzaya) asks questions on behalf of the crowd. She eventually befriends Bayar, who is a good 20 years her senior. The age gap does not prevent the two sad characters from connecting. The woman moved from Mongolia to Japan when she was aged just eight. Her demeanour suggests that her personal connections are few and far between. In a way, both people are foreigners inside their own land.
This slow and meditative drama has a duration of nearly two hours. The takes are long, and the camera mostly static. Poetic devices gently dot the narrative. Bayar has a helium balloon of a different colour to hand attached to his back virtually all the time. This cryptic signifier is very powerful in its simplicity. Bayar looks a little warm and a little creepy, something between Bansky’s Girl with Balloon and Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Aesthetically, it is incredible the difference that such a tiny touch of colour can make to the picture and to the story. Director Sengedorj Janchivdorj and cinematographer Nergui Erdenekhuyag are well aware of this, often placing the decorative toy against a black-and-white background, and then breaking the film down into colour-titled chapters. The screen compositions are very carefully framed. The images of the derelict buildings overlooking the Mongolian rural landscape are soul-invigorating.
To Bayar’s disappointment, the region’s government plans to convert the warehouse into a large turkey farm. So he sets out to change the mind of the governor. In the film’s most intriguing and eerie scene, our protagonist has a meeting with the high-raking politician. He sits at the end of an empty table, roughly 15 chairs separating him from the authority. The man talks to him via a microphone. Despite the distance (physical and societal), Bayar finds a very persuasive way to get into the heart of the bureaucrat.
This is a movie designed to enrapture viewers with its evocative aesthetic. The developments aren’t always entirely intelligible. For example: while it’s very clear that the interpreter is a sorrowful person (she cries copiously more than once), the origins of her malaise are far less discernible. The final denouement is not particularly remarkable. Overall, The Muralist lacks the punch-on-the-face factor of its 2024 predecessor (the award-winning Silent City Driver).
The Muralist just premiered in the Official Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
