Eternalitytan: Dark, Dark Man, A (2019)

Dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov
2019 | Kazakhstan | Drama | 130 mins | 2.35:1 | Kazakh
NC16 (passed clean) for violence and coarse language

Cast: Daniar Alshinov, Dinara Baktybaeva, Teoman Khos
Plot: A boy is murdered in Kazakh village. Detective Bekzat wants to wrap up the investigation quickly: after all, the perpetrator has already been found by local police officers. But when a journalist arrives from the city, everything falls to pieces.
Awards: Official Selection (Busan)
International Sales: Arizona Films

Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Corruption, Truth
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slow
Audience Type: General Arthouse

Viewed: Screener – Perspectives Film Festival 2020
Spo

If you love slow-burning investigative procedurals, as I do, you will find this unmissable. 

A Dark, Dark Man is already Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s seventh feature (he turns 38 this year), yet he shows no signs of slowing down with two more films already completed.  It is a brilliant work and deserves more exposure in the festival circuits and arthouse cinemas around the world. 

I would describe it as Nuri Bilge Ceylan meets Diao Yi’nan in the lawless Kazakh steppes; in particular, it shares a similar ‘spirit’ with the former’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and the latter’s Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014). 

It begins with a dead body as a detective plants evidence that would incriminate a local mentally-challenged man.  There is no investigation to be had with the suspect already pre-determined. 

This is the natural order of things in this part of the world until a female journalist unexpectedly drops by hoping to dig up a sensational story of systemic corruption. 

Yerzhanov’s direction is extraordinary as he delivers one beautifully-controlled shot after another, sometimes complemented by ‘80s-style synths that Cliff Martinez could have composed for a Nicolas Winding Refn picture. 

Slow, but always riveting, A Dark, Dark Man is a pensive take on a bleak masculine world where chronic violence is the only painful truth, particularly when one becomes the recipient of it. 

The irony is razor-sharp, and unsurprisingly so, as this is also a movie where characters do hilarious things and tell hilarious jokes. 

One might see a bit of the Old West in Yerzhanov’s film, but make no mistake, this is Central Asian arthouse cinema at its finest, directed by one of the region’s most distinctive voices.