SCHIZO
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Picture This! Entertainment
Grade: B
Directed by: Guka Omarova
Written by: Guka Omarova, Sergei Bodrov
Cast: Olzhas Nusuppaev, Eduard Tabyschev, Olga Landina,
Bakhytbek Baymukhanbetov, Soukhorukov, Gulnara Jeralieva,
Kanagat Nurtay
Screened at: Angelika, NYC, 3/20/05
If any in the audience who have seen all and done everything
ever thought of visiting Kazakhstan, perhaps the last place
anyone would want to tour, "Schizo" will dissuade them of his
ambitious plan. This is not to say that the Kazakhstani people
dislike where they're living, though presumably they've never
been offered an apartment in Tribeca or Chelsea. In fact the
people of the former Russian republic, now made up of
Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks and a few Germans, have a certain
pride of place, all of which is exemplified by the title character,
Mustafa (Olzhas Nusuppaev), who is nicknamed "Schizo" by his
classmates not because he's loony but because he appears
slow in the head.
We never see Schizo in a classroom, if indeed there are any in
the godforsaken village in which he lives with his mother and his
mom's magnetic, motorcycled Sakura (Eduard Tabyschev).
With few people to look up to in a land that's far from Michael
Jackson, Schizo virtually worships Sakura, riding about with him
on his bike, which allow him to smile broadly in contrast his
deadpan, slow-witted appearance throughout the brief, eighty-
six minute work.
Director Guka Omarova appears willing to demonstrate the
bleak flatness of the Kazakhstan countryside where people live
in wooden shacks with apparently no neighbors for miles
around. (In fact if you look at a modern map of Kazakstan you'll
find the large landscape dotted by little towns far apart with the
exception of the 1.1 million-peopled capital of Almaty, called in
the subtitles by its pre-1994 name Alma Ata.)
In the director's slow, methodical film, she demonstrates the
petty corruption of the villagers. A doctor who examines
Mustafa aka Schizo while taking his own blood pressure
recommends to the mother–who pays him in sour cream and
eggs–that she must fork over some money by taking the boy to
the capital city for treatment of his alleged slow-wittedness. The
lad, who follows his hero Sakura about, helps to arrange illegal
fights in town, where the promoters have never heard of boxing
gloves and the referee has no problem allowing a fighter to kick,
even strangle, a man when he's down on the map as in the
American film "Fight Club." When Mustafa takes the small
purse of a brutally injured fighter to the man's wife, the red-
haired beauty and Sissy-Spasek lookalike Zinka (Olga Landina),
he and the young woman strike up a liaison in which the boy
loses his virginity.
"Schizo" defies a genre interpretation. It's partly a cynical look
at a barren landscape, partly an unusual romance, a bit of hero
worship (Zinka's small boy looks up to Mustafa in the same way
that Mustafa looks up to Sakura), but most of all a coming-of-
age story about a 15-year-old who may not be as slow as others
make him out to be but one who takes pride in his sense of
responsibility.
Not Rated. 86 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 39594 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1370887 X-RT-TitleID: 10004962 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: B
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