Storm over Asia

Storm over Asia – At 125 minutes long, this silent-era (1928) Soviet film still feels incomplete. My Image DVD proclaims that the movie is 35 minutes longer than any other known versions. Nonetheless, at least one crucial sequence remains missing – the hero, a humble Mongolian herdsmen and trapper, fights bravely with the partisans, apparently orchestrating a successful ambush, and, then, twenty minutes later, we see him a bound prisoner of the heartless and evil Imperialists. What happened? How was he captured? Who knows what else is missing from this film, an episodic shaggy-dog tale that seems to combine several different movies and genres under one title? At least three pictures uneasily co-exist in this film: the predominating movie is a violent, implausible, but exciting sort of Western set in Mongolia: cowboys against Indians with the Indians defined as the “good guys” – this film is something like an Indiana Jones thriller or, more accurately, an early silent movie serial, full of cliff-hangers and rapid, almost surreal transitions; this adventure picture is intercut with ethnography – apparently the film was one of the first pictorial explorations of Tibetan Buddhism, at least as practiced on the Mongolian steppes and the movie pauses periodically for detailed sequences showing temple rituals and dances; finally, Pudovkin, the film’s director, stages action sequences using heavily symbolic dialectical montage – political points are hammered home with relentlessly literal-minded imagery: the climax of the film is an actual “storm” in which hurricane-velocity winds hurl the wretched Imperialists out of central Asia in a torrent of toppling bodies blown before great gales of charging Mongolian cavalry. Understand: the climax is not a battle-scene filmed in a wind-storm; rather, it is collage of shots of charging cavalry and wind-blown Imperialist soldiers, the two forces never occupying the same frame. This apocalyptic final vision rhymes with the movie’s spectacular beginning – unfortunately badly damaged by time: we see huge storm clouds from which giant boulders rain down from the heavens smashing rocks and trees to pieces. Pudovkin is sometimes able to fuse his anthropological footage with the symbolic montage sequences – for instance, temple ritual scenes are matched with images of the Imperialist general and his wife ritualistically preparing themselves for an official ambassadorial visit. But, in some instances, the point of the montage is completely obscure – for instance, I have no idea why Pudovkin intercuts ghoulishly detailed imagery of surgery on the wounded hero with images of the bad guys conspiring to use the herdsmen, whom they have tried to execute, for their political purposes (the Imperialists think the herdsmen is lineal descendent of Ghengis Khan and, therefore, can be exploited to unite the local tribes against the Soviets). In instances like the surgery sequence, it seems that Pudovkin is merely morbidly interested in the images of surgery, filmed as if for a horror movie, wants to use the footage, and tries to “jazz it up” by intercutting those images with other less lurid material. Much of the film has this feeling – dull stuff is spiced-up with sexy imagery of violence or weird religious rites. There are some great gags – the divine Lama who heads the Mongolian Buddhists is a baffled-looking two-year old infant sitting on a huge throne surrounded by sinister priests and gigantic idols. After seeing Richard Gere promote the Tibetan Buddhist’s claims to autonomy, and after Scorsese’s Kundun, it’s peculiar to see a film in which the Buddhists are evil, corrupt priests plotting to enslave their people – all of this is consistent with Pudovkin’s rather primitive Marxism and, frankly, rather refreshing although it takes some mental adjustment to conceive of the Tibetan priests as villains. I enjoyed this movie for its pictorial extravagance – the landscapes are astounding – and parts of the film have a bracing pulp energy. When the hero goes berserk in the huge, gloomy fortress where the bad guys hide, we get some spectacular, totally unrealistic (because symbolic) imagery of the herdsmen, like Samson, literally tearing the place apart and pitching dozens of villains down the steps and out windows. But the plot is essentially idiotic and much of the manic editing style makes no sense – this kind of film is the precursor to MTV-style montage which has essentially destroyed most action movies made during the last 30 years.