Visually stunning that is reminiscent of Kurosawa and Tarkovsky, this Kazakh New Wave film treats the theme of vengeance as a long-gestating circle of life and death, efficiently and poetically told in a series of chapters.

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Thanks to the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, we get to see this rare gem from the Kazakh New Wave. 

Produced at a time when the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse, Revenge found new life as a Kazakh film though never quite reaching the circulation level needed for it to be on the radar of film enthusiasts. 

A visually stunning work that is reminiscent of Kurosawa and Tarkovsky, director Ermek Shinarbaev takes a simple story of revenge and turns it into a meditation on the passing of time. 

A girl is killed by her drunken teacher, setting up a chain of events as the father vows to exact vengeance by raising a new child to avenge her. 

“He will grow in strength as I grow old and weak.”

Told in a folkloric way through a series of chapters, Revenge is remarkably efficient as its story set across time is rendered with poetic brushstrokes that paint and taint its characters’ noble and dishonourable motivations respectively. 

Shinarbaev’s film is also set across space—geographically, we move from a rural village in Korea into the mountainous region of China, and finally into Soviet territory where Kazakhstan sits. 

Although produced under the Soviet ‘school’, Revenge cuts deep as an example of borderless Asian cinema back when such an analysis wasn’t yet fashionable. 

Shot in radiant light that suggests a cosmic embrace of all that is good about human existence, one that might exorcise Man’s unhealthy penchant for ‘an eye for an eye’ violence, the film is ultimately about the relieving of burden—from the past, from tradition, and from destiny.  A solid eye-opening work.

Grade: A-

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