Close to Eden

Urga Close to Eden
Directed by	Nikita Mikhalkov
Produced by	Michel Seydoux Jean-Louis Piel René Cleitman
Written by	Rustam Ibragimbekov Nikita Mikhalkov
Starring	Bayaertu Badema Vladimir Gostyukhin
Music by	Eduard Artemyev
Cinematography	Vilen Kalyuta
Edited by	Joëlle Hache
Distributed by	Miramax Films (US) Curzon Video (UK)
Release dates	1991
Running time	109 mins (US VHS) 114 mins (UK VHS) 118 mins (Russia)
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Mongolian / Russian / Mandarin

Urga is a 1991 film by Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov. It is released in North America as Close to Eden. It depicts the friendship between a Russian truck driver and a Mongolian shepherd in Inner Mongolia. The film was an international co-production between companies based in Russia and France.

Plot

A Mongolian shepherd Gombo lives in a yurt in Inner Mongolia with his wife, three children, and mother. They are portrayed as unsophisticated and traditional and Gombo desires relations with his wife, to try for a fourth child, which puts his wife at unease due to Chinese law. Intoxicated Russian buffoonish truck driver Sergei has stranded himself, driving his truck into a river and is picked up by Gombo, taken to his family's yurt, to join him in dinner. Gombo's family are particularly taken with Sergei's back tattoos, later revealed to be sheet music for "On the Hills of Manchuria". Gombo and Sergei become mutual dependencies despite their language and cultural differences. Gombo and Sergei go into the nearest city together, where Gombo is supposed to buy contraceptives (condoms), buying a television set and other goods, but not contraceptives due to drugstore staff being women. Sergei, a former army bandsman, becomes drunk and sings "On the Hills of Manchuria" in a nightclub, with the band playing from his back tattoos. He is arrested and bailed out of jail by Gombo.

Gombo returns home, and along the way stops to eat. He has a strange dream featuring his drunken, horse-riding relative as Genghis Khan and his wife as the Khan's wife. In the dream both he and Sergei are captured and killed and the TV set is destroyed. Gombo awakes from his dream and arrives home with the TV. He and his family switch between watching a broadcast of the President of the US and a badly sung variety show. Gombo's wife, upset that he didn't buy contraceptives, leaves the yurt. Gombo follows her out onto the prairie, sticking an urga (a long stick with a lasso on the end used to capture animals) into the ground in a traditional warning that a couple is being intimate. A voiceover from Gombo's fourth son, who was conceived at this time, concludes the film, and a chimney belching smoke stands where Gombo placed his urga.

Awards

Urga won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and Best European Film at the European Film Awards. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and for a Golden Globe in the same category.

Influence

The film is credited with sparking Czech writer Petra Hůlová's initial interest in Mongolia, leading to study, then an exchange year in Ulan Bator, and then to her first novel, Paměť mojí babičce (2002; literally "in memory of my grandmother"), in English translation published as All This Belongs to Me (2009, Northwestern University Press).^[1]

References

External links

• Urga at AllMovie
• Urga at the Internet Movie Database