Friday, 11 October 2019

The Gold-Laden Sheep and the Sacred Mountain


London Film Festival review #3


This first feature by director Ridham Janve is one for films of slow cinema only. Happily, I am one of these. The film is about some shepherds living an isolated existence high up in the Dhauladhar region of the Indian Himalayas. The two main characters are an old man who complains constantly about everything and his younger helper, who deals with the loneliness and boredom by drinking himself senseless. There is some humour to be had from these two, but this is no comedy.

One day, a military jet crashes in the mountains. Hearing that the authorities are offering a reward, a number of the shepherds go in search of it. Of course, the crashed plane represents the gold-laden sheep of the title, which comes from an old Indian parable curiously similar to that of the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece. However, this is certainly no Jason and the Argonauts and, if I have suggested that this film has anything resembling a plot, I apologise. Those seeking a conventional narrative should look elsewhere. At the screening I attended, an elderly couple huffed and puffed their way out after half an hour but, for those with a more open mind, this film offers considerable rewards.

No other feature film in the history of cinema has been set in this remote and extraordinary region of the Earth, and Janve and cameraman Saurabh Monga have captured some very beautiful and haunting images that linger in the mind long after the film is over. The amount of equipment they were able to take to the location was severely limited, and a total absence of electricity meant they had to charge their cameras using solar power. Many of the things they had planned to shoot apparently turned out to be impossible, so the fact that they managed to complete such a fully-formed piece of art is remarkable.

All of the actors featured are non-professionals from the Gaddi community; playing versions of themselves, Janve elicits entirely natural performances from all. The subtle ambient score by Jered Sorkin never intrudes, but accentuates the mysterious power of nature – this is a place where humans seem about as significant as ants as they scramble among the broken boulders strewn across the mountain slopes, and where man is an intruder in a landscape that will endure long after he is gone.

A great film.

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