Customer Reviews

Tuya's Marriage

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Do yourself a favor and watch this well made, interesting film which shows how life is in a place you'll most likely never see!

Tuya's life is made harder after her husband injures his back and can no longer work on their sheep farm. She is forced to realize that she needs an able bodied husband and should get divorced and try to marry again. She is responsible for the well being of her two children and she works 24-7, dressed in layers against the cold of the steppes, riding her camel and coming home to make food and more hot milk-tea, everyone's favorite drink OTHER than booze.

The plot doesn't thicken much more, but its enough for a good glimpse into a world infinitely different from ours. Well directed and well filmed, colorful and COLD!

Deep in the steppes of Mongolia, far from "civilization", life is brutal and harsh. Regardless of the freezing weather, and traveling by camel, every day sheep must be herded to forage for food, water must be hauled by hand from far away, etc. People live in wide round huts, cooking is primitive and there is no break to the routines. In Tuya's case all tasks are hers alone as her husband was crippled while trying to build them a well. Her son is just old enough to be a little help, while her baby is monitored by her husband.

One day her sister-in-law visits and persuades her she needs to divorce her husband so she can re-marry and find a man to help her. Ultimately Tuya reluctantly agrees but stipulates that any marriage to another man must include the care of her former husband. After she divorces him, there is no shortage of potential suitors, usually arriving in family groups to plead their cases. The characters and tale of courtship are riveting. She weighs each proposal carefully and in the end makes her selection. But was it the right choice? Will this new marriage improve her way of life or just make things more complicated?

This is a story to which we can all relate, no matter our cultural heritage. It is beautifully filmed and very moving.

If you're interested in Mongolia & not sword wielding meat eating barbarians, then you have a real story to watch.
It commences at the end, then explains itself.

beautiful scenery
great casting
touching

Life is survival, & it's not easy buddy!
;)

Our film society has included Tuya's Marriage as one of five films we are showing this season.

The photography and scenery in the film is uniformly excellent, and the detailed depiction of the customs, dress, and daily routines of struggling Mongolian sheep-herders is fascinating. The music, used to great effect in selected scenes, fits the film beautifully: exotic, stirring and plaintive to the Western ear. These aspects, and the unique premise of the story make the film worthwhile.

The film is scripted, but with the exception of the title role, characters are played by non-actors. There is a clear, event-studded storyline and ample drama, but emotions and humor, which are central to the story, are buried far below the surface. This, for me, is a disturbing weakness in the film. The characters feel SO foreign that they are hard to feel close to.

Perhaps it is my unfamiliarity with the cultural norms of these sheep-herders, but I found a lack of expressiveness in the actors' faces, and a paucity of gestures and of eye-contact between characters distancing. The spoken lines, as well, often seem to me, an American, to be delivered without the appropriate expression of voice, but I don't understand Mandarin and it may just be the unfamiliar rhythmns and intonations of the language that are unsettling for me.

One last nitty complaint - to me, the decibel level of wind, motors, and voices in the scenes filmed on the steppes was distracting (though memorable).