Original subtitles

Hello, and welcome to the audio commentary for Steppenwolf.

My name is David Flint, and I'm a film critic and pop culture historian, and

the editor of Desperate Living, which you can find online at desperate-living

.com. Over the next hour and 40 minutes or so, I'll be talking about this movie,

the themes it plays with, how it fits into the established genre cinema.

Notably, director Adol Khan Yersinov stated that this film is genre cinema in

its purest form and I'll take a look at what he might mean by that and how that

plays out in both the film's visual style and the nods it makes to other

movies, other genres across the board. Some of which are obvious, some of which

may be a little bit less obvious.

I'm assuming that you've already watched the film before listening to this

commentary.

Obviously, I might be dropping the odd spoiler here and there.

Not that this is the film that has the kind of sudden plot twist that can be

really ruined by that. But still, if for whatever reason you have come here

before watching the movie properly, I can't imagine why you would have done

that. But, you know, you never know.

Any case, just stop now, turn the commentary off, and start the film

again. Watch the movie, come back, listen to this later.

I should also say that I'm not going to be doing a scene-by-scene description of

what is happening on screen at any particular point.

I'm not the filmmaker, I'm just a critic, and I'm assuming that most of

you can see what's going on on screen just as well as I can.

So if major plot points sail by while I'm talking, that's fine.

I'm looking at the bigger picture, not picking up very specific individual

points, but obviously anything important that I need to mention, I will do. But

generally speaking, as I say, I'm looking at the bigger picture, the

themes, the influences, the cultural reference points of the film, rather

than just describing them.

what's happening on screen. This isn't an audio description track.

As we've seen during the opening titles, right away the film acknowledges where

the title comes from with the quote from Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, which nicely

sets up where the film will go and the nature of the main character.

Though arguably which main character might be a bit more ambiguous than we

think.

Obviously, calling the film Steppenwolf immediately brings to mind the 1927

existentialist novel, which was filmed in 1974.

That version of Steppenwolf is long overdue a new release, by the way.

But that's a different story.

I mean, it certainly seems that Yersinov, as both writer and director of

this film, is making a nod towards the inspiration of the novel's themes with

the film's title.

He does that with a couple of things in these opening scenes that I'll come back

to in a second.

But this is obviously a story that has little in common with Hess's book

narratively. It's perhaps more atmosphere or a vibe that plays as an

inspiration.

Still, it's nice to see the connection acknowledged, even if this isn't in any

tangible way a genuine adaptation of the book.

This image that we've just seen, the shot in the doorways, obviously a nod to

John Ford's The Searchers, which of course shares the general narrative with

this film, the search for a kidnapped child.

It's certainly an early sign that this is a Western movie as much as anything

else, or at least a Western-influenced movie.

There's an in-depth discussion elsewhere on this disc about Westerns, post

-Westerns, and whether or not we can call films that don't take place in the

Old West.

Westerns.

Or not.

So I'm not going to go over that to any great degree.

But the themes of Westerns are obviously often universal ones. Stories that could

work in different times and places.

You can look at a movie like John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 or

something like Fort Apache the Bronx where the latter emphasises the

connection of Western cinema to contemporary crime and action cinema

right away in the title.

Or perhaps more recently, and more connected to the film that we're

watching now, many of the crime movies that have emerged from Eastern Europe

and Asian cinema over the last couple of decades that play on Western movie risks

of revenge, rivalry, the fight to control a land.

It's not for nothing that we tend to refer to any sort of lawless environment

as being like the Wild West, after all.

Peter Adamski's 2019 Polish film Ethan even plays on that in the title where a

community dominated by gangs is presented as being very much in line

with those lawless western towns where corruption, violence and rivalry rules

the day.

The opening scenes of this film from the pre-credit sequence

to what we're seeing now have a genuinely unsettling feel to them.

Not only because at this stage we have no real idea who is who or what is

happening but because it all feels incredibly tense and apocalyptic.

I use that word deliberately and we'll come back to the whole world of post

-apocalypse cinema and where this film fits into that a little later on.

But there is a sense of immediate unease and bleakness here that I got genuinely

uncomfortable when I first watched the movie.

A lot of this is down to the way the film looks, it's down to the music, it's

down to the general vibe of the characters.

Because we're not told anything.

And that's...

how the film will progress of course you know we're given as much information as

we need to follow the story as it's happening but we're not bogged down with

backstory with character development with anything else that gets in the way

or maybe makes makes things easier for us again we'll come back

to talking about the look of the film the music and so on and so forth as this

commentary goes along

You know, I think we can see the connection to the Wild West scenario in

a lot of real life situations that are playing out in countries where

revolutions or social collapse has taken place.

And I think one reason why this film feels so immediately unsettling when we

watch it is because a lot of it, a lot of the images, a lot of the actions

feel very familiar from what we see going on in numerous Middle Eastern

countries and of course in Ukraine right now.

These images of executed prisoners, gun-toting men in the wastelands,

shattered families feel very much like a world that we now see on the TV news.

The fact that it takes the film a little while to reveal just who are the

official authority figures, the police,

and who are the quote-unquote terrorists, is pretty telling.

This is a scenario where there's no sense of control beyond that which

various rival groups, gangs we might call them, I'm including the police

here, they just grab from each other, take what they can, they're only looking

out for themselves, and each side, of course, is as dangerous and corrupt as

the other.

opening of this film to be so uncomfortable because it has an

authenticity and a realism about it that you don't often find.

The violence is casual and brutal, normalized abuse that comes with a need

to cling on to power.

And it's impressively un-graphic. This is the sort of film where you tend to

think that you've seen a lot more than you have.

simply because of the sounds, the inference, and the indifference of those

involved. And of course, the brilliance in which the whole thing is set up, so

the implication is everything.

And that indifference is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of things,

because movies tend to monsterize characters.

villainous characters I should say, giving them a sadistic glee or a

psychotic madness when they torture and kill.

Movies like to show villains as being utterly villainous and taking great

pleasure in what they do.

But here it's completely dispassionate and I think that makes it all the more

disturbing because you can see how dehumanised the whole situation is.

There's no sense of being able to reason with this nameless character, who is our

central figure, or indeed with anyone else here, because they're not even

seeing their victims as human.

You know, he might as well be stamping a clerical form at stabbing somebody in

the hand.

And I think it's this complete lack of humanity and empathy that has turned

some people off from this movie.

Even if they don't necessarily register it, I think there's a subconscious

revulsion that some people will have to a film like this because it doesn't

present its violence in a comfortable or exciting way.

In the way that we're used to seeing violence presented in the film, where

it's all very dramatic and, you know, it gets the adrenaline pumping.

I mean the action scenes here are certainly dramatic and everything is

beautifully shot but there's no sense of the film trying to make the violence

thrilling or cathartic or enjoyable.

Movies generally avoid the ugliness and the immediacy of violent death by either

making characters into say cannon fodder like armies of henchmen or

enemy soldiers that we see mown down by the hero in most action films.

Or else they drag it out and make it very emotionally involving.

They make it painful, they make it tragic.

Which actually takes away from the nihilism rather than adding to it.

There is, of course, a long history of movies that have made audiences very

uncomfortable because they present violence in a way that isn't remotely

entertaining.

A lot of those movies have, of course, been censorship hot potatoes over the

years precisely because they haven't sugar-coated the horror, which I think

is quite interesting when you think about it because you would expect movie

censors to be far more concerned by films that glamorize violence or

trivialize death.

But if you look at some controversial movies like the Cannibal Holocaust,

Maniac, I Spit on Your Grave, several others.

You can see that they were, quite often still are in many cases, criticised by

audiences because they're too mean-spirited and depressing.

You know, these are horror films, but they're not supposed to be dark.

They're too real, I guess.

I mean, I do get it, because obviously most people watch films, even violent

horror films, as escapism.

Even the genre cinema that's too much for the mainstream, like, say, Saw or

Hostel, they still work within the boundaries of an entertaining

horror film, I suppose.

So if a film doesn't give you that rollercoaster ride or it becomes too

real, then audiences tend to reject them.

And I can fully sympathize with that. I remember being genuinely upset by both I

Spit on Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust when I saw them in my early

teens during the pre-Video Nasty era.

And that was precisely because they were not like any horror films that I'd ever

seen before, even within that whole Video Nasty, uncensored video realm,

because they offered.

No sense of escapism, but rather, instead, just bludgeoned you with this

horrible, authentic, relentless realism.

Even though you knew the films were works of fiction, there was something

genuine about them that would speak to you on a very visceral, emotional level.

You were seeing violence in a completely unvarnished way.

And I think that this film does that as well, so I certainly understand why

there are some people who were genuinely appalled by it. You know, especially if

they came across it on the festival circuit where you probably don't know

all that much about what you're going to see beyond maybe an organizer synopsis

in the brochure or online.

And that can never really set you up for a film like this.

You can reduce Steppenwolf to its basic plot narrative. You could even tell

people that it's an entirely bleak experience.

But everybody reading that will just probably be saying, yeah, yeah,

whatever, I can take it.

But obviously no one's going to say that the film they programmed in their

festival is a complete downer. And I'm not saying that this film is a complete

downer, by the way. Not at all.

But I can see how this would not speak to some people who might be in the

middle of a few days of horror films and may well have come to this straight from

something much lighter.

Let me give you an example.

I mean, I know this because I first came across Steppenwolf at the Mayhem Film

Festival in Nottingham in October 2024.

And this was the Saturday afternoon movie following the last video store.

And the last video store is a very entertaining horror comedy awash with

1980s VHS era nostalgia and action and fun.

It's the very definition of fluffy lightweight retro horror.

So it's completely removed from the vibe of this movie.

And I do like it when festivals mix it up and Mayhem in particular has always

been very good at that going from the grim to the lightweight and back again.

But certainly I wasn't sure what this would be in terms of tone or style.

Would it be entertaining?

Would it be very slow?

Would it be fast paced?

Obviously there were references

And the critiques to movies like Mad Max will come back to that in a little bit.

But, you know, you just don't know what you're going to expect from a film like

this. And I know that it definitely split the audience.

Some people loved it. Some people absolutely hated it. And quite a few

people that I spoke to afterwards seemed genuinely baffled by it.

Not so much that they...

they didn't like it they just couldn't relate to it in any way shape or form

and you know what that's that's fine that's totally fair enough not

everything is going to be for everyone um god knows you know the mayhem chaps

could tell you how many movies i've walked out of at that event over the

years and i know that will horrify some film purists and I kind of agree walking

out of a film generally is quite a bad thing but when you've got something like

16 movies to watch in four days if something isn't working for me I'd

rather skip it and go and get some food or something because you know you've got

a lot of stuff to get through but if we get back to this movie

one of the criticisms that I've seen of the film

certainly from a couple of people online, is that it is a misogynistic

film.

Which I have to say, I think is completely wide of the mark.

I understand it, but I think it's wrong.

I think some people really struggle to divorce a movie from its narrative, its

makers from its characters.

Now certainly the men in this film are

very misogynistic.

Or at least, they treat women as horribly as they treat each other.

I mean, that's arguably more misanthropic than misogynistic.

You know, I would be a lot more sympathetic to claims that the film

itself had a very misanthropic view of the world.

But misogyny?

I'm not sure.

I think that we're perhaps unused to seeing women treated in the way that

Tamara is here, or perhaps being so submissive in her acceptance of this

treatment. And that may be why it's just so shocking to some people. This isn't

something that you will find in a modern Hollywood movie.

I don't know that that's because she's a woman, though, because, as you all know,

you will have watched this film already.

There's a distinct lack of sexual motivation throughout the entire

narrative. It's not as if she's being trafficked or sexually abused.

In fact, most of the characters seem entirely disinterested in the fact that

she's female.

I think that her victimization comes about because she is so obviously

vulnerable.

whether she had learning disabilities, whether she experienced some sort of

devastating trauma, or perhaps more likely both of these things have

combined to make her the way she is.

And I think in a sense that's probably even more shocking for audiences because

seeing vulnerable people taken advantage of or abused is definitely something

that makes most normal people feel inherently uncomfortable.

I mean certainly

For me, watching this film for the first time, it was, yeah, uncomfortable.

I think that's, you know, the way to describe it.

But again, I don't think that's necessarily because she's a woman. I

certainly didn't take it when watching the film originally that she was being

victimized because she was a woman.

Maybe she's being victimized because she's weaker.

But then, you know, weaker men are potentially victimized in this film too.

I think when you see the treatment that our main character, our man with no

name, dishes out to everyone, men, women, and children, then, you know, you

can see that he's an equal opportunity nihilist.

The only person that he's remotely interested in, really, is himself and

everybody else. He's barely even human to him.

But here's the thing. I mean, the film doesn't condone this behavior.

It's not as if the movie is trying to make us admire him.

I do think that a lot of people tend to struggle with the idea that a central

character might not be a hero or even what we would call an anti-hero.

An interesting term that I've never quite got my head around.

That still suggests somebody who is admirable in some way.

I know that movies tend to give us somebody who we are supposed to

empathise with as the central character, as the main character.

And maybe that's Tamara here, but it's not this guy.

He's clearly selfish, untrustworthy, psychotic and somewhat unhinged.

And I don't think the film is remotely trying to humanise him at any point.

Not even when we find out what...

his real motivation for helping Tamara is.

You know, that just comes over as another sign of how he uses people and

is then prepared to throw them away when they're no further use.

I mean, you clearly can't trust him. He's going to stab you or shoot you in

the back if it's in his interests, as we've seen.

And as we'll see in a moment here.

So this idea that the film and the filmmakers are somehow sympathetic to

him, that he's supposed to be somebody that the viewer relates to, admires,

likes, whatever that might be, that just feels like a very misguided

interpretation of the film.

And I do think potentially it's a very deliberate misinterpretation of the

film. I think that we're at a point of time where some people figure that

they can get social media clout by finding something offensive in a movie

and then being the first person to point that out.

That might just be the cynic in me, but I have seen this kind of thing

happening. I'm sure you have too.

And, you know, I'm not saying that the people who instinctively dislike the

movie are wrong.

That's obviously a matter of personal taste, and we don't all like the same

things, quite clearly.

But, you know, I do think that there is this tendency in some circles to not

simply dislike a movie, but then to ascribe a philosophy to it that simply

isn't there. So, as I said, like a willful misrepresentation.

to have to have a reason why you don't like a film rather than it just not

speaking to you.

And that feels very odd.

I mean, if we were to say that every film is in sympathy with the worst

aspects of its worst characters, where would that leave us?

I mean, a film that's about racists, racist, is a film about rape,

celebrating rape.

Well, I know that some people do like to make that argument, but it's obviously

nonsense.

Drama often centers around conflict and often features awful people with

dreadful opinions.

I think the best films can also acknowledge that these monstrous people

can also be charming, personable, even fun, rather than making them into

completely one-dimensional.

But that still doesn't mean that they admire the character or that we're

supposed to like them. I think the film can show how manipulative they are and

it can show us why people will be attracted to those people.

I mean, I doubt that even the worst monsters in society see

themselves as evil.

You know, I know we used to see these single-minded killers and morally

irredeemable characters.

But, you know, in real life, it's a lot more nuanced. And everybody believes

that they're on the side of the angels. And what they do is justified, whether

it's for their own needs, for the needs of their family, the needs of their

nation, the needs of whoever.

You know, we can convince ourselves that anything is justified if it's for the

greater good.

You know, I think the nuance is being a bit lost as audiences demand everything

as black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, and worry that allowing

somebody, no matter what the character is, to express a hateful opinion is

dangerous, lest it influences other people.

And like all good censors, they always think that it will be the other people

affected, not them.

But I can't see anybody watching this film and thinking that this is someone

to look up to.

Not unless they're as completely psychopathic as he is, in which case,

you know, he's probably already too late for them.

I am always fascinated by the whole kind of monkey-see, monkey-do attitude that

drives censors, and those who are their fellow travellers.

which tends to include a lot of film critics, social media commentators, and

everybody else eagerly looking to be offended.

I fully understand the dangers of fake news, propaganda, and blowhards egging

on the mob, but works of narrative fiction are a very different kettle of

fish. I mean, yeah, some are clearly, obviously, propaganda.

But movies like this, you know, they're telling a story. They're telling a story

about people that you would never want to meet in a place that you would never

want to be.

The idea that Steppenwolf is some kind of lifestyle guide that people will look

at and then want to copy, it seems hilarious to me. I mean, what is there

here that anyone would possibly aspire to?

Of course, I do understand that the film might well trigger people who have

experienced domestic violence or bullying or

any kind of violence. And I'm certainly not belittling that in any way, shape or

form.

I'm not sure where I really stand on trigger warnings because I think they

often act, partly as a spoiler, but more significantly, they reduce a

movie. that might have a very complex narrative to a series of moments and

events.

But I do understand that, you know, that may be helpful for some people in order

for them to avoid seeing something upsetting.

Though, you know, I do wonder if having that content spelled out so bluntly out

of context isn't itself a potentially triggering moment for the time.

And... Yeah, I'll be honest, you know, I don't subscribe to the idea of film

being harmful.

That's the justification that censors of all types use, and it makes me

immediately, automatically very suspicious.

I think films can be upsetting, disturbing, offensive, challenging,

but I can't believe they cause actual harm, not in a serious,

lasting, meaningful way.

I mean, there are things that I've seen in films and documentaries that have

stayed with me far longer than I would have wanted them to.

Thinking of the documentary The Bridge, for instance, the final shot of the guy

throwing himself off.

That's something that lingered in my head for a very long time afterwards.

You know, these are images that you can never unsee and moments that you might

have avoided in retrospect.

But I mean, have they harmed me?

You know, I don't think so.

And the problem is that we never know what will trigger a negative reaction.

I mean, we could guess, but the oddest things might have an unexpected effect

on people.

When I was a little kid, I had a vomit-inducing nightmare about Oompa

Loompas after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in the cinema.

And I don't think that anyone saw that coming, not even me. I didn't find those

characters at all frightening when I actually watched the movie.

Clearly, I'm not trying to trivialise ideas or triggering images, and I'm not

dismissing how problematic that can be for some viewers. This is just my

opinion and my experience.

But I do think we need to see everything in context, particularly if it's a work

of fiction.

So the narrative context of the film, and not simply reduce a movie to being a

manifesto of the worst characters' ideas, or...

a list of upsetting moments.

Incidentally this is arguably the only point of the film where Tamara is

sexualized in any way shape or form and it is a a

very subtle moment that doesn't really go anywhere.

But yeah I mean there is one point of the film where she is treated

differently because she's female.

So, fair enough.

But I think a lot of the film's problem for some people, for some viewers, is

the way that Tamara is shown as such a passive victim.

Now, this isn't a portrayal of women that we tend to see in modern Western

movies. Movies made in the West, I mean, not Westerns.

I kind of need to say that given the film's connection to that genre.

The way she behaves, her constant talking to herself,

her inability to say no to people or to assert herself, and the fact that she's

further victimized because of that behavior.

You know, her mumble dialogue is definitely challenging for some people.

Either they find her very annoying or they are completely infuriated by the

way she doesn't stand up for herself.

But I think that this is a remarkable performance by Anna Starchenko.

Brilliant and nuanced and far more complex than a lot of people have given

her credit for.

You know, it's really, really hard to convincingly portray somebody who is so

completely damaged.

At least I assume it is, I'm not an actor, but given how few people have

managed to do it well, then I think it must be quite a difficult acting job.

There seems to be a tendency to over-egg the pudding by a lot of actors who are

playing somebody traumatised or damaged, and Achenko does quite the opposite

here. Everything is very quiet, but fixated.

with her broken persona struggling with a situation that is clearly beyond her

ability to cope with.

You know, she has no kind of self-preservation instinct whatsoever.

But I don't think that the film would have benefited from a portrayal of her

as a strong, powerful woman.

She needs to be this way so that the viewers can connect with her, can

connect with her plight.

You know, I think she's our representative here, not this

psychopath.

She's the person that we are supposed to empathize with.

And, you know, she's confused. She's shell-shocked. She's beaten up by a

world that's gone to hell.

It's significant that, as with everything else in this movie, we're not

told exactly what is going on with her.

What is it that makes her the way she is?

You know, I suspect that a lot of Hollywood movies would feel the need to

spell it out, explain things so that we can relate to whatever has happened and

understand why she is the way she is. But we don't really need a backstory in

this film, not for anyone.

I mean, obviously, our policeman, I was going to say hero.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how we'll describe him. Let's just say the

policeman.

You know, he'd get a bit of a backstory, you know, a very small degree, and it's

the bare minimum.

I mean, the film itself is very ambiguous about what exactly has

happened. How has society reached this point?

It's been called post-apocalyptic, and it certainly is that, though maybe it's

kind of more kind of currently apocalyptic.

It might be a better description.

You know, there's no time set for the film.

Is this the future, the present, or what?

And equally, it's never spelled out exactly where this is taking place.

I mean, obviously we can say Kazakhstan because of building, signage, text, etc.

But, you know, that's because the film was made in Kazakhstan.

But maybe it's not. I mean, it could be anywhere.

any time.

I mean, clearly it's a world where law and order has collapsed, but equally

it's still functioning in a lot of ways. There's electricity, there's radio and

TV broadcasts, there are working security cameras, and still some sort of

government, clearly, that's at war with a terrorist group.

So this isn't some kind of hyper-futuristic cursed earth scenario.

It feels a lot more like a country at war, or maybe civil war.

That sense of social collapse that we're in the center of, that we're kind

of maybe weeks from the normality of the past.

You know, on all the kind of the tribal infighting, the grasping for power, the

settling of scores, somewhere that's evolving out of civilization.

which is the kind of thing that we see in a lot of real-life war zones,

especially civil war zones.

You can look at this film and you can see images of Bosnia, Somalia, Syria,

and countless other countries that were and are torn apart by a power struggle

between the established government and the terrorists, the insurgents, the

freedom fighters.

Call them what you will, depending on where your sympathies lie, I suppose.

And obviously where there's a power vacuum, people will take advantage,

seizing control of small areas.

We can see this with characters like Max, petty little thugs who gain a bit

of power, and Taha, who is a step above, but still you suspect somebody who will

be pretty small time in normal circumstances.

It's all rather pathetic, a bit like postcode gangs who defend their turf

against... the handful of people who live less than a mile away.

Being a big fish in a small pond is something that's very attractive to a

lot of people even though they often end up getting swallowed by much bigger fish

in the end.

Now what this movie reminds me of in a lot of ways is the first Mad Max movie.

We tend to think of Mad Max in terms of the world that the second movie set up

which

Then would act as the prototype for countless other films, mostly Italian

movies like The New Barbarians, Bronx Warriors, 2020 Texas Gladiators,

Endgame, 2019, several others. That whole kind of punk

rock, BDSM inspired look, the futuristic wasteland, the pumped up cars and

bikes, the general futuristic post-apocalypse vibe of the things.

but I think because of the impact and just the sheer quantity of those movies

we do tend to quite often forget that the first Mad Max took place in a much

more recognizable world one that was perhaps on the verge of collapse or the

midst of collapse maybe a world that's again a few weeks before this takes

place

but still something we could relate to. It didn't feel as if it was taking place

in some far-off distant future.

That film is very much about how everything begins to fall apart, how

assorted crises, in the case of Mad Max that's an oil shortage, looming

environmental catastrophe, these things can push civilization to the edge.

That it doesn't take a lot to send us from where we are now

to where we'd be then.

So in that sense, it's probably a film that's more dystopian than post

-apocalyptic.

That's an area that the sequels would increasingly head in.

And you know, I'd say the same thing about this film.

Dystopia doesn't have to be futuristic, even though it usually is in movies

where a narrative has to be established of things to come to explain the

alternative reality that we're seeing.

God knows we've seen enough countless dystopian nightmares taking place in the

real world, several of which are still ongoing right now.

Obviously, I mentioned earlier that it's hard to watch this film

Right now, I'm recording this at the start of January 2025.

You know, you can't watch it without thinking of the war in Ukraine.

Kazakhstan is, like Russia and Ukraine, a former part of the USSR.

And so it's easy to relate the imagery here to the pictures we're seeing on the

news and the stories we hear of lawless soldiers and war crimes and crumbling

social structures.

I think that that war has also made everybody around the world a lot edgier

about the possibility of global conflict and the unthinkable nuclear war.

We've seen people, politicians, talking heads, military people, openly

discussing the idea of tactical nuclear strikes and the options for what they

seem to think is a non-apocalyptic nuclear war, as if such a thing could

ever be contained once it began.

that radiation would somehow simply blow away on the breeze you know we only have

to look at how many people in the world of politics the media and beyond seem

almost desperate for an escalation to see how things could go very bad you

know then we've got all the other conflicts and revolutions around the

world with rogue states and power grabs hype scoring

grudge settling, the rise of political extremism and division.

I'm not taking any political stance on any of the conflicts going on right now,

other than to firmly hope that by the time you sit down to listen to this,

they've all come peacefully to an end.

But you can see how the world is a lot more focused on the idea that everything

is going to hell.

And that's not even getting into climate catastrophe, which used to be the thing

of science fiction.

And I mean literally the narrative of a bunch of movies like No Blade of Grass

and The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

But of course it's something very real that most people, apart from the

wackiest cranks, have now come to accept as a genuine and imminent threat that we

have to get to grips with if it's not already too late.

I do think it's actually quite interesting how we tend to...

I almost always think of post-apocalypse cinema, TV and literature as being post

-bomb. The idea that the remnants of civilization battling it out for

survival in a radiated wasteland.

And obviously there's a lot of that stuff out there.

Pretty much all of the Italian films mentioned earlier.

Things like A Boy and His Dog, Deathsport, Sardar's, Logan's Run,

Planet of the Apes films.

And a whole load of 50s sci-fi, like Five, The Day the World Ended, into the

60s with things like Panic in Year Zero.

But actually, the world of post-apocalyptic cinema is a great deal

more varied than that, and a lot more interesting.

I think a lot of the films made in the 1960s, 70s, even the 80s, feel

surprisingly prescient now.

I mean, like I said a few minutes ago, movies like no blade of grass positive

future where environmental catastrophe has decimated the earth and we've got

movies like silent green and zero population growth that are predicting

the horrors of population explosion of food shortage too many people not enough

resources obviously we're all now a lot more aware

or the dangers that are shown in movies like The Ultimate Warrior and Virus, TV

shows like Survivors or books like Stephen King's The Stand where the world

is decimated by a rampant pandemic.

You know, this stuff is a lot less far-fetched than we might once have

thought.

Even the zombie movies of George Romero like Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of

the Dead, not to mention his very underrated movie The Crazies and some of

David Cronenberg's early films like Rabid.

you know essentially deal with the idea of an infection that is out of control

so movies about disease be it natural man-made or even alien you

know they tend to be amongst the most unnerving because this is an apocalypse

that we can all relate to the nuclear war is still an unimaginable horror and

hopefully we'll remain that way but the idea that a new infection can emerge and

spread rapidly unstoppably across the world We all know that it can happen.

We probably got off very lightly with COVID-19, but we know that when the next

pandemic happens, and it is a matter of when and not if, then things could be a

lot worse.

Had we learned anything from the COVID days, it's that society will very

quickly splitter and lunatic ideas will spread like wildfire.

The idea of us all coming together for the greater good was clearly a pipe

dream and so the apocalyptic world that we see in a lot of these movies now just

feel like yeah that's how it would all end up if things were worse than covid

I think it's our knowledge of human nature and the assorted

perils that we now face and which could literally hit us out of the blue are the

things that make the various post-apocalyptic stories so unnerving I

think it's almost certainly why the zombie movie became the predominant

horror genre, overtaking the classic monsters of the Universal and Hammer

eras.

It's not just the idea that the zombies are us, as Romero often said.

Even the idea of dead bodies walking, coming back to life and eating the

living, it was more of a genuine threat than a Transylvanian Count or a single

Frankenstein monster.

If we look at some of the various tabloid horror stories of recent years,

all the tales of assault zombies, people on designer drugs who became crazed,

attacked and ate people on the street, stories that were somewhat exaggerated

as it turned out, but still have at home the message that we have no idea what

will suddenly infect people and turn them into monsters.

It doesn't even need to be a chemical or natural infection.

We saw again and again in places like Rwanda and Bosnia how easily people can

be made to see that people who used to be their friends and neighbours are

suddenly subhuman and be willing to murder and brutalise them once tribal

rivalries have been stirred up.

But I guess it's how all wars work to a large extent because we do need to be

convinced that killing other people is noble and necessary for war to happen

but it does seem especially monstrous in civil wars especially between religious

or tribal groups I think similarly dystopian narratives work for us because

we've seen enough real life examples from Nazi Germany to Cambodia to

know how possible it is

Given how fractured our societies are now with so many countries, so many

communities, so many families split politically to the degree where one side

will literally dehumanize the other and there can never be any level of coming

together or understanding or tolerance, we can all see how fragile democracy and

free speech and individual liberty are.

History tells us that These are ideas that flourish and then fall time and

time again.

So there's certainly no reason to believe that it couldn't happen again,

that it couldn't happen here, and that it could quite easily happen

almost every night.

You know, certainly dystopian cinema narratives have been very popular in

recent years with things like The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale.

all seem to reflect a current unease about where we're going politically with

the far right raising up populist politics a lack of tolerance

and the general othering of those we disagree with

I think obviously a lot of this stems from Brexit in the

UK, the election of Donald Trump in the US.

They seem to be both events that have absolutely just made the

cultural, social split between groups one that, you know, it's a divide that

can never be brought together again now, it seems, which is sad,

really.

You know, I do think that it's entirely understandable that people are then

attracted to these dystopian stories because it's that weird

thing. I think some people watch them because it's a frightening view of a

potential future. Some people watch them because, you know, they get some kind of

smug satisfaction in saying, look, this is what's going to happen. You know, I'm

right, I know.

But equally, I think it's just something that feeds into the general zeitgeist.

It's something that kind of sits in our subconscious and then feeds out. A bit

like, you know, how many films in the late 60s and early 70s were kind of

channeling the Vietnam War in America.

Movies, books, TV shows, you know, they will reflect our cultural concerns,

even if they don't do it.

openly, even if they don't do it consciously.

You know, I think it's all understandable because, you know, we

have the lessons from history, we have people's fears about the current state

of the world.

But I do think stories like this one, Steppenwolf, which we're watching now,

where everything has just fallen apart and everyone is in it for themselves,

they're much more interesting than some of the other dystopian, apocalyptic

narratives.

Not the more fun, it has to be said, because there's rarely the same sense of

hope that we get in some of the other films, the films that are about

oppressive states where the grip on power is often loosened or overthrown by

the end, or at least where the central characters get to escape to a sense of

personal freedom.

Not always, obviously.

I mean, we can look at things like 1984 to see how many of these narratives have

decidedly bleak endings.

I think the sense of civilization simply disintegrating is a much scarier thing

than it being taken over.

Because, you know, we can see how nightmarish that is in countries where

it has happened and where life suddenly becomes pretty much entirely worthless.

You know, at least in the movies about the European dictatorships, they're

still generally functioning societies.

Not free societies, certainly, but, you know, they still

operate on a day-to-day level.

Something like this, you can see that everything you do, everything that makes

you feel safe, everything that is civilized has gone, and it's just

been replaced with...

very random violence and i think this long

sequence that we've been watching here is you know a great example of that that

it just the sheer level of cruelty

of dehumanization of thinking

that the only way you deal with people is

through violence which is clearly where he's reached you know it's the point

he's reached in life and maybe at the point he was always at in life that's

the interesting thing we can uh we can argue about that just how much he's

someone who's been corrupted by what's happened in the world and how much he

was already very corrupt but yeah you know i mean i think that these films

films like this offer so little sense of hope even for

people who would you know maybe in a in a dystopian dictatorship be happy to toe

the line obey the rules and and get on with life that isn't even an option for

people here

So let's talk a little bit more about Anastaschenko.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's probable that most of the

people who buy this disc will not be all that familiar with Kazakh cinema and its

stars.

Some of you might be, I mean some of you may be Kazakh so you know I'm not making

a blanket statement but on the whole I think that that's probably going to be

the case.

I think even if you are, you might not be particularly familiar with her

because this is only her second movie after making the film Natai in 2022.

Since making this film, she's also been in Aralkan Yersinov's next movie,

the horror film Kadett.

Prior to this, she studied at the Kazakh National University of Arts between 2009

and 2013, and she graduated from the Russian Institute of Theatrical

Arts in 2017.

I mean, perhaps it's because she's not a hardened screen actor that she manages

to give such an honest and affecting performance.

I think somebody more experienced may well have been inclined to act a bit too

much rather than taking the less is more approach.

I think that she's genuinely superb in this.

Maybe the best thing about the movie.

So I think that there are strong performances all around, even from the

supporting characters.

But certainly, you know, she plays her part very well. She seems very

convincing. And she works well with Eric Azov, who's a much

more experienced actor.

And, you know, as you can see in the movie, you know, a very powerful and

unsettling presence.

You know, the kind of person that would watch a film like this and despite the

fact that you know it's all acting probably find him a little bit of a

scary person to ever meet.

Eisenhoff has been working solidly since 2007 and I imagine that for most

people outside his home country he's probably best known for his work on the

film The Liquidator in 2011.

where he appeared alongside Vinnie Jones.

Not quite sure what I should say about that.

Maybe nothing.

He was also in Yusinov's previous film, Goliath, which is, if you haven't seen

it, it's a pretty impressive crime drama, well worth checking out. Very

different in style to this film, but in its own way, equally dark and edgy.

I think that Yusinov does well here with the role that It is obviously pretty

thankless in many ways.

I know that a lot of actors relish playing awful characters and that the

villains are quite often the most interesting characters in the movie.

I do think that his role here is one that could have very easily become one

-dimensional and artificial in the wrong hands.

I think he does a very good job of humanising his character without ever

making him sympathetic you know he's not simply a mindless thug

and probably makes him all the more reprehensible because you know that he

he can read it but you know little moments like this the kind of crazy

little dance um what's going through his mind while he's doing this it's it's

these little these little touches that i could make the character all the more

disturbing because you know this looks like somebody who is on the constantly

on the verge of exploding constantly on the verge of doing something awful to

somebody who may or may not deserve it and clearly he's you know hugely

unsympathetic to Tamara you know making her go out to identify this child to see

if it's hers just that's

cruel and unnecessary.

I suppose it is necessary that she has to identify the body, but I think you

know what I mean. It just seems sadistic.

I mean, he does a lot with this role without saying very much.

You watch him and you can see that the character is constantly thinking,

plotting, working out how to turn things to his own advantage.

You know, it's a great portrayal of a very feral character, one who, you know,

you can definitely imagine was already corrupt and brutal long before whatever

has happened, happened.

If anything, you can kind of imagine that this catastrophe has played into

his hands, bringing out his instinctive survival instincts and that he can get

what he wants at whatever cost without any sense of...

having to answer to anyone anymore.

So in a way I think he's probably just as broken as Tamara.

Obviously he has this kind of psychopathic lack of empathy except

where it works at his advantage and he can fake being personable when he needs

to.

It's the classic psychopath behaviour that they can act at all knowing what

people expect of them but

None of it is genuine.

None of the emotions shown are real.

I think this is a fine, subtle piece of acting. And I say subtle because even

though his performance is quite big and broad, there's a lot more going on

under the surface.

You know, and I think scenes like the one we've just seen with the kind of

weird childlike game.

Again, interesting examples of how he is playing with her,

but not in a positive way. You know, he's kind of leading her into thinking

that he's somebody that wants to help her, but only in order to get what he

needs.

I think he pulls off the odd impossible that he makes us relate to the character

while still wanting us to see him get his comeuppance.

It's a difficult balancing act because obviously there are only two central

characters that are with us throughout the film. And so we need to find them at

least interesting.

Maybe even sympathetic without necessarily liking them.

I don't think any movie would work with two characters who were utterly

unrelatable, utterly without any sense of redemption.

That would be very hard going.

I mean, like I said earlier, even the most awful people in real life are not

one-dimensional villains.

They'll all have their good points, their humanity, their moments of

kindness, their humour, whatever it is.

You know, when you think of dictators and historical monsters, it's clear that

they all obviously had some sort of charisma that enabled them to climb to

power in the first place, because no one can do that on their own.

You know, the worst people are often very good at convincing others that

they're decent, even heroic, that they have the best interests of others at

heart, their mission, their group of people, whoever it is that they need to

convince.

The psychopaths are noted for being very manipulative because they don't have

properly functioning emotions, so they just act that role convincingly for

whoever they're trying to use.

Again, I think that a lot of movies we see with psychopathic characters, those

characters are a bit too broad.

I suppose we tend to think of psychos in terms of psycho killers, madmen, people

who are deranged, and so those interpretations tend to become a bit

over the top.

But, you know...

He does a great job here of being unbalanced enough for us to see just how

screwed up he is, while also being horribly exploitative.

So, you know, our symptoms are limited.

And the film, again, likes to give him just enough of a backstory to intrigue

us, you know, like what has gone on with his family to make him do this with his

brother to lead to such a violent moment. And his prayer is such a nice

touch because it's obviously an imitation of what he's seen Samara do

earlier. Again, it's somebody behaving as he believes he is supposed to rather

than somebody expressing a real human emotion.

So I think that's a really nice, subtle touch.

You know, this whole interaction again with his brother, I assume his brother,

kind of leaves us with more questions than answers.

You know, what happened to bring him to this point?

What has gone on in the family?

But the film doesn't need to tell us. It can let us make up our own backstory for

everybody involved here. And that's potentially more interesting because our

backstories can be equally as valid as anybody else's.

So, you know, there's far too many films that just feel like they have to spell

everything out because the last thing they want are audiences scratching their

heads and saying, who was that?

Why was that?

What's been going on?

Everything has to be kind of hammered home and explained to you like you're an

idiot.

And there's room for ambiguity. There's room for not knowing.

You know, the great thing about something like, say, Dawn of the Dead,

not to the living dead, to a degree, not to the living dead, doesn't quite work

this way. But, you know, if you look at Dawn of the Dead as a sort of standalone

continuation.

Again, there's no explanation as to why the zombies are rising. They're just

there. They're just doing it.

And even in Night of the Living Dead, there's the interest that it's to do

with a space probe, maybe bringing back some alien infection, but that's never

confirmed. That's just a theory.

So, really, the film just has the dead rising, and

nobody knows why.

I think one of the most impressive things about this particular film is

just how gorgeous it is given the bleak narrative and

the equally bleak barren locations.

This is definitely a film that makes the most of its landscape and manages to

bring a certain grandeur to an empty wilderness.

I think in that it

very similar to a lot of the Westerns that inspired it, I guess.

You know, that's a genre that often used the size and the emptiness of the open

spaces of the West to full advantage, often almost playing with agoraphobia to

make deserts and empty spaces seem actually more threatening than dark,

closed-in locales.

Equally, Steppenwolf is a film that knows

how to best exploit the world it occupies. And, you know, it doesn't have

a lot to work with. That's the interesting thing.

You know, you look here,

you look, like, out the window, you look at the scenery.

There's not much going on.

So to try and make that seem grand, seem epic, seem

dangerous?

Now, I think that's a skill.

A lot of the credit for this must go to the director of photography,

Yekinbek Petrelif, who is one of Kazakhstan's most acclaimed

cinematographers. I'm kind of hoping that I'm not mangling Kazakh names, by

the way. Sorry if I am.

I'm doing my best with pronunciation.

But yeah, as I say, he's one of Kazakhstan's most acclaimed

cinematographers with very good reason, as you can probably appreciate watching

this.

I think he definitely brings this movie an epic scope that suits the narrative.

And I think the fact that he graduated to making feature films from the

documentary world probably helps him bring a certain realism to the look of a

film, even as he explores the vastness.

I think it will be much easier for everybody involved to make a movie like

this, dark, claustrophobic, oppressive, because, you know, it is, after all, a

character study of two damaged people at its heart.

But I think the decision to kind of open it up, have it take place primarily in

very bright daylight, you know, give it that set of grandness, you know, I think

that was absolutely the right.

the right choice.

And I think that that bigness of the film is something that's also helped by

Gallim's and Moldan Azar's impressive

soundtrack music which you know is it's a very 1980s inspired

10th wave score that perhaps shouldn't work

You know, you might reasonably expect a film like this to have a rather darker,

maybe more minimalist soundtrack.

But I think the score is actually inspired.

You know, it opens the movie up.

It helps give it that scope that it might otherwise lack.

You know, and on top of that, it's genuinely great music. I think a lot of

these 1980s pastiche electronic soundtracks can be...

can be quite often a bit hit and miss sometimes they labor the point a bit too

much they perhaps don't get quite what it was that made those original scores

work because they're just trying to do a second-hand version of it but i think uh

this movie um doesn't think here that says that this film trained to look like

an eight season film and so the soundtrack actually impressively works

because you know it's you know and it is used fairly sparingly it doesn't

overwhelm the film it just opens it out at the right moment so you know i don't

know if there's um if there's a soundtrack to this available there

probably should be there are plenty of labels out there who who really should

be picking this up whether they're aware of the film or not i don't know but

hopefully again releases like the one you are watching now will help boost the

profile of the film and get that soundtrack out there where you want the

vinyl

Of course, the music also helps tie the film to genre cinema.

Because, of course, you know, genre cinema is where that kind of electronic

score was most often used.

That kind of John Carpenter synth score is something that you connect to a

certain kind of movie.

And, you know, you could easily see the influences here of Carpenter's films,

like Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, as we mentioned earlier.

movies themselves made by a director who was fully immersed in genre history and

was actually reinventing the western in particular in modern dress i know that

for for years in the in the early 1980s captain had wanted to make an actual

western you know a film set in the west you know a kind of a real bravo type

movie but of course in many ways he'd already done it a few times at that

point

I'm actually a big fan of movies that play with genre.

The ones that take elements from several different genres to create something

fresh and original.

It's kind of interesting how people tend to be so single genre

fixated that they have to kind of pigeonhole a movie into one or maybe two

specific genres when it's clearly playing with ideas from several.

But it has to be, this is a such and such film with elements of this.

You know, I think we like to categorize things, don't we? I mean, you know, you

look at musical genres, you look at movie genres. People like to put things

in little boxes so they can relate to what it is and they can decide, is it

their thing, is it not their thing?

You know, I think Steppenwolf is a great case in point.

You know, Yersinov is taking bits from here.

bits from there, blending them together to make something fresh and new.

I mean, obviously, the Western is the most obvious influence, and it's the one

that he has very specifically referenced in interviews and in the film itself.

You know, I mean, there's no attempt to hide the fact that this is effectively a

reworking of the searchers.

That early shot of Tamara in the doorway virtually screaming the influence at you

right away.

You know, you don't have to be a...

a hardened, silly-ass movie expert to recognise that that is a reference

point. You know, that's a very smart move, by the way.

There'll always be critics who want to show how smart they are by spotting the

fact that a film has ripped off an earlier movie.

So I think stating that influence up front in what is effectively the second

scene in the movie, you know, putting it up there, so stating the influence

Kind of effectively silences critics.

You know, Yusinov is hardly trying to hide where he's taken his central

narrative from.

But there are a lot of other connections you can make here, and I'm not going to

go into all of them because it's a lot more fun to let you try and pick up on

these yourself.

And also, you know, there are probably some that I've missed, some that will

become noticeable on further viewings.

I think this is one of those films that will reward repeated viewing because

it's something that I think will offer something new every time you watch it.

It's certainly done that. I mean, I've seen the film. This

country is my third viewing of the film.

So, you know, I've watched it properly a couple of times and now I'm...

watching it again and there are the moments that just pop out moments that

may have gone by you the first viewing the second viewing so I think this is

something that you know it's going to be a rewarding repeat view

you know clearly there are several genre connections that we can make nods to

other movies that stand out obviously there's a lot of Mad Max here Even down

to the fact that our central character is a cop whose family has been killed

and he's seeking revenge.

That's the major plot turn of the first Mad Max.

The point where the film becomes genuinely dystopian when Max's family is

killed and he becomes an avenging angel.

His humanity is kind of chopped off at that point.

Again, people tend to forget just how grounded the first Mad Max was, at least

visually. It all happened in a world that's gone to hell, but it's still very

recognizable.

And that's certainly the case here.

I mean, these shots, the shots on Hossbach, are pure Western movie,

obviously.

You know, this could easily, you could just take that shot right now, show it

to somebody, say that's from a Western, and of course, you know, they're going

to believe you. Why wouldn't they?

We could also see the influence of the Samurai movie and that's where things

get really fun because obviously Samurai films, Japanese Samurai films or people

like Kurosawa, there's cross-pollination between those movies and

Westerns where Westerns influenced Kurosawa, Kurosawa then influenced

Westerns, particularly the spaghetti Westerns.

That would then, of course, go on to influence American Westerns and the way

those films looked.

And those Westerns would then feed into the post-apocalypse movie. I just find

all this really fascinating, the whole idea of how we just see something, take

it, we change it to something else. And then the thing that was inspiring us can

become inspired by what we've done so that there's constant growth.

new levels of inspiration.

I love that. I think that's the very definition of creativity to me.

There's something very intriguing about a movie that takes a familiar story or a

visual palette and transposes it to a different genre, a different time, a

different place.

As has often been said, there's probably only a handful of core narratives in the

world.

that everything else has been spun off from one way or another.

And clearly the idea of the strong, silent anti-hero arriving in a corrupt

town and playing two sides up against each other for his own purposes is

something that can be endlessly reworked. We've seen that used in sci-fi

and action movies, even in dramas, because you can make a narrative like

that work without even involving any violence.

So I think the gritty crime films of the 1970s, especially things like Dirty

Harry and all the Italian polizioteschi, they all play a part here as well.

You know, you can get that vibe, even if it is just in that sense of

having a hero who is simply the least flawed.

I mean the cop in this film is a particularly dirty cop but all those

movies tended to play on ideas of the cops and the criminals being essentially

two sides of the same coin and plenty of the Italian films in particular were

themed around stories of vengeance and heroes working outside law.

And I mean this is of course at its heart a road movie as much as anything

else. Road movies are always intriguing in the way that they all play with

metaphor. Pretty obvious metaphor, of course. The road represents the

emotional, psychological journey of the characters involved.

We have that here.

Certainly for Tamara, who I think we can say finds her inner strength by the end

of the movie.

The film doesn't go for some kind of cliché.

crowd-pleasing moment of the victimized woman suddenly becoming a kick-ass

action hero and it's not it's not like the terminator movies or something like

that you know she is still very damaged very vulnerable and while she gets to

return to her own private world at the end of the film you know you can't help

but think that her future is still going to be pretty bleak but Having said

all that, she's clearly found the strength she needs to fulfil her

mission, to rescue her son and the children.

And she's stood up for herself.

It's interesting that she goes from earlier seemingly wanting to be killed

by the cops, she literally says, kill me once you've rescued him, to

killing him, which you might say is the only way that a film like Steppenwolf

can... can end satisfactorily you might be right but then I don't

really think that Steppenwolf is in the business of satisfying the viewer I

don't think this is a feel good movie so the ending didn't need

to deliver any sense of catharsis the ending could have easily been as

nihilistic as the rest of the film it could allow evil to triumph because

Sadly, you know, evil quite often triumphs in the real world.

Yeah, so I think that the fact that the film ends with Tamara

going back to her life, having done what she set out to do, you

know, it does that because that's what film, that's what the filmmakers want,

not because it thinks that that's what the viewer wants and it's delivering the

goods.

You know, there's a lot to be said for a film as being crowd-pleasing.

We don't always want to be beat over the head. We don't always want to leave a

film feeling more depressed than we were when we started watching it.

But at the same time, I think a lot of films have

very compromised endings.

Endings that, as we know, people will watch films in production they'll go to

preview screenings, write down their comments and then studios will insist on

changes being made and the ending is quite often the point where changes get

made because audiences obviously have this idea

of how they want something to end and they want it to end in a very satisfying

way which doesn't always help the story but...

You know, that's just the way it is. I mean, I imagine a film like this has not

gone through too many committees during production or post-production.

And so it's essentially been able to go its own way.

So I really should... talk at this point about the director and writer of the

film, Adol Khan.

Yes, and I've obviously mentioned him throughout, but we've not actually

discussed him.

You know, he's not somebody who is especially well-known in the West.

You know, he's had films that have played at festivals like Cannes and

Venice, but generally speaking, I think that... distribution of his work

international distribution of his work has been somewhat sporadic and often

restricted to the the art house circuit it's not been

kind of widely available commercially um particularly on on home video where of

course most people see their films most films don't get any kind of theatrical

release

If they do, quite often it's a very small theatrical release.

He's a filmmaker who has been working incessantly since making his debut

feature, Rialto, in 2011.

I don't say that lightly. I do mean he's worked incessantly.

The man has made 17 features in 13 years, as well as making shorts and

working TV.

He made five different productions in 2022 alone, which kind of puts him on

the same level of prolific filmmakers from the 1970s, like Jess Franco.

So, you know, if you've been impressed by this, his previous film, Goliath,

which is probably the second most accessible of his works at the moment,

honestly, there's a lot to explore.

But the great thing is that I think what we can see is that He's making a lot of

films and he's doing stuff, I guess, very quickly.

But at the same time, there's no skimping on the quality of these movies.

These are all fantastic films, at least in terms of the ones that I've seen. So,

you know, this isn't somebody who's just grinding out crap.

He's making quality stuff.

I mean, he's a filmmaker whose work seems to cross genres.

Most of his films, most of the stuff he's done has generally been more

realist dramas.

I'm not saying that Steppenwolf isn't grimly realist, but I think you know

what I mean. Maybe more grounded dramas, as well as thrillers and

crime movies like Goliath.

His latest film, Cadet, as I mentioned earlier, is a horror film, so perhaps

he's continuing with his exploration of genre with that.

It's yet to be released, so we have to wait and see, but I'm very much looking

forward to that. Hopefully it will be something that gets a UK release, a US

release, maybe play the festival circuit.

I think my hope is that the wider release that Steppenwolf is receiving,

and the fact that you're watching this movie on Blu-ray, on...

whatever format you're watching it on, but the fact is that you're watching it

in a way that you probably haven't been able to do with some of his other films,

might now mean that his earlier work may start to find a more global audience,

because he's clearly a very impressive talent.

It's interesting, and I have to say a bit depressing, just how many

countries are still

still somewhat overlooked in terms of their cinematic output.

I mean, we've come a long way in the last few decades, don't get me wrong. I

mean, I think the film industries of Japan, South America, India, Pakistan,

South Korea, China, lots of other countries. Countries that once were

culturally marginalised to a degree and had their movies stuck in that

art house world rather than having any sort of commercial wider appeal.

You know, those now get the sort of releases that were unimaginable.

I think we have to thank genre cinema for that.

A lot of mainstream movie fans, not even mainstream, a lot of your kind of self

-declared intellectual film fans, various film fans, will look down on

genre fans.

But, you know, the truth is that...

The fan base for horror, for action, for sci-fi, for westerns, for erotica, or

whatever else, those fan bases are often much more open to international cinema

and experimental cinema than either mainstream audiences or the arthouse

audience.

And, you know, the whole movie market, since it emerged in the beginning of the

80s,

certainly has allowed once marginalized national cinema to find a wider audience

than traditional mainstream distributors ever imagined when films were only

playing in cinemas but you know a lot of countries they still have to see the

domestic cinema breakout of the festival and art house niche and Kazakstan

certainly seems to be one of them I mean to be fair you know kazakh cinema has

not generally had the best reputation in its own home country you know a bit like

british films of the 1980s you know a lot of people in kazakhstan the locally

made movies is being kind of worthy arty not very entertaining made

with government subsidies that prop up the film industry and they've struggled

to compete with More expensive, more commercial, more entertaining Western

and Russian movies.

But, you know, there has been a step forward.

More commercial films are now being made.

More popular films are now being made. There was a revolutionary move.

in the film industry, in the Kazakh film industry, called Partizan Cinema, which

feels a little bit like a kind of less restrictive version of the Dogma 95

movement, involving people making socially realistic, low-budget, but

commercial movies that are made without data and all the restrictions that

perhaps come with that.

So you probably won't be surprised to hear that Yasanov has been involved with

that movement.

Steppenwolf, I don't think is really part of that.

This is a film that obviously does have some state funding, and it's not social

realism.

It may be low budget, it may be commercial, but it's certainly not a

domestic drama.

But nevertheless, I think the fact that it does have state funding shows that we

can probably assume that whatever restrictions...

that are placed on filmmakers using that funding method are probably not too

restrictive. You know, I can't really think of a more problematic narrative

for any government official than this one.

But there you go.

I mean, of course, the elephant in the room when we talk about Kazakhstan and

cinema is Borat.

Sasha Baron Cohen's typically stereotyped, some might argue, racist

character slash movies, who is a Kazakh journalist.

I'm sure that all of you are very familiar with Borat, probably much more

so than you are with Kazakhstan cinema in most cases, I'll bet.

You know, I'm not going to be all holier than thou and po-faced about what is

clearly a satirical comedy, but I do think that the films and the character

have probably not done much.

for the cultural reputation of a country in places where exposure to actual

Kazakh art has probably been very limited, if not non-existent.

So I'm hoping that we'll get to see more examples of Kazakh cinema emerging

internationally.

I'm saying this as somebody who probably has as much exposure to the films as

everyone else so it's always possible that I might eat my words after seeing

some but you know seriously I suspect that there's still a wide world of

undiscovered cinema out there in places that we tend not to associate with

filmmaking in fact you know I don't need to assume that I know there is because

you know we see examples of these films turning up from time to time at

festivals films from places like Ethiopia that then don't go on to

get much distribution so that's the stumbling block I think you know they

might play the festivals they might be seen by a handful of people but either

they're too outside what we see as I

was going to say commercial cinema not even commercial cinema maybe what we see

as proper cinema because you know they don't all necessarily follow the same

filmmaking rules that we've all got used to.

But it's crazy really because all this stuff is going pretty much unnoticed but

given how many outlets there are now for distributing movies so many boutique

video labels so many streaming options it seems

kind of unacceptable that We're still at a point where huge amounts of world

cinema is just not being seen.

Obviously, I'm going to argue that this is a pretty exceptional film no matter

where it comes from.

I'm not expecting that there will be loads more like this out there as we

explore the world of Kazakh cinema.

Who knows? Maybe there will be.

Maybe it's a kind of a J-horror situation

where you just scratch the surface and there's so much good stuff.

But even if it's not, that's not the case. I don't think we should be seeing

more of those movies.

But I think the fact that this release exists...

at this time shows that this is obviously a kind of a cut above the

average but you know sometimes it takes a great and accessible film to then pave

the way for the rest maybe some of those films won't be quite as commercial but

you know they still deserve to be seen and you know this is certainly not not

an easy film to get into it's not what we would describe as comfortable viewing

I think it perhaps becomes a little less difficult on each subsequent viewing

because you at least know where it's heading and can focus on the other

aspects of the film than simply just being overwhelmed by the bleakness of it

all. Which is certainly something that I think is the case for a lot of viewers.

I'll admit that I found this to be very, very hard work for the first 20 minutes

or so when I first saw it.

Before it...

It kind of hit its groove, and I settled into the film's style and got into terms

with the sense of nihilism and the very difficult characters. And I'm a

big fan of park cinema.

I'm assuming that if you're listening to this commentary, that you also like the

movie. So I'm not going to say to you, stick with it.

But certainly that's what I'm advising.

people who haven't seen the film to do especially if they're the sort of person

who might find the unreal ending grimness of it a bit too much you know i

think this is a movie that rewards you for your patience and takes you into

places that are uncomfortable and challenging you know i mean i think the

whole plot point of children being trafficked and murdered for their organs

will be very difficult for a lot of viewers but ultimately i think it's a

very rewarding experience and you know it's full of so many amazing moments

like the one we're seeing now. Just images of

corroded beauty.

I don't think that many people will think of this as a fun viewing.

You know, not all cinema needs to be a sleepism. Not all cinema needs to be fun

to be appreciated.

You know, there's room for desolation in cinema. There's room for something that

shows you a side of life that you don't want to see.

There's room for darkness as well as light.

And everybody takes a different approach to what they find rewarding in a movie,

I suppose.

Some people just want throwaway entertainment. Some people want

something that is speaking to them on a much deeper level. And

perhaps that's what this film does.

You know, I do think that Steppenwolf manages to temper its absolute horror

with just enough visual panache, inventiveness and genre

nods to make it much more entertaining than you might have imagined it to be

and arguably than it should be.

It's a film full of brilliant

One of those films, I think, where you can just hit pause and there's a pretty

good chance you'll find a remarkable still image.

Incredible moments like the one we've just seen there, that kind of crazed

scream of triumph.

It's minimalism.

It's lack of compromise.

I think all of these are points that make this...

I mean, it's more than the sum of its parts, I suppose. They make it a film

that is recognizable and unique.

Depressing.

Sometimes uplifting.

Ugly. Beautiful.

You know, and, yeah.

I think it's an extraordinary piece of work.

So...

Thanks for sticking with it when you first saw this. Thanks for sticking

around to listen to me talk about it. And I hope that every time you see this

film, you'll find more and more to appreciate.

I'm David Flint. This has been Steppenwolf. And hopefully I'll get to

run into you again on another commentary very soon.

Once again, thanks for listening.