otrar.mp4
[Hide] (2.7MB, 498x360, 01:05) THE FALL OF OTRAR new restoration premieres Oct 12 at NYFF
>Ardak Amirkulov’s staggering historical epic (co-written by Aleksei German) concerns the intrigues and turmoil preceding Genghis Khan’s systematic destruction of the lost East Asian civilization of Otrar. The movie that spurred the extraordinary wave of great Kazakh films in the 1990s, The Fall of Otrar is hallucinatory, visually resplendent, and ferociously energetic, packed with eye-catching (and gouging) detail and traversing an endless variety of parched, epic landscapes and ornate palaces. But this is also one of the most astute historical films ever made, its high quotient of gore grounded in the bedrock realities of realpolitik: when the Kharkhan of Otrar is finally brought before the Ruler of the World, he could be facing Stalin or, for that matter, any number of latter-day CEOs. A movie that has everything, from state-of-the-art 13th-century warfare to perfumed sex, The Fall of Otrar is truly a one-of-a-kind experience.