Anatolii Vasil'ev: Summer Homestead (Sajylyk, 1992) reviewed by Liubov' Borisova © 2022 |
The concept of life after death is an important aspect in any culture and religion. Anatolii Vasil’ev’s mystical drama Summer Homestead is a chamber story, a film that unfolds mostly in bedrooms and houses, that was able to convey the worldview of the Sakha people so voluminously and fully that it became a Sakha film classic as soon as it appeared on television in 1992.
The main character of the film is Anatolii, a middle-aged man who came from the city to his native village to buy an old house from the old man Mekheele. The old man, who is dying, hardly recognizes Anatolii and says that he does not want to be medically treated because the people from Sajylyk are calling him. Taking the keys, Anatolii and his friend Nikolai inspect the purchased house. As it turned out, Anatolii used to live next door to Mekheele and had visited this house on more than one occasion. Having celebrated the deal, Nikolai calls Anatolii to his home, but he wants to spend the night in the house he bought. This horrifies Nikolai, because bad rumors surround this old house, which had been transported from the Sajylyk area. But Anatolii is not deterred by these rumors, and he stays alone in the old house. Nikolai promises to pick him up early in the morning. At night, Anatolii has a nightmare in which he sees himself from the outside and tries to find the old man Mekheele, who passed by but disappeared.
In the morning, as agreed, Nikolai arrives, but he cannot see Anatolii, as if he had become invisible. Anatolii reckons that he is still asleep and is having a nightmare. He runs away and meets two men by the lake. One of them is dressed in the old-fashioned way, and the second turned out to be an acquaintance of Anatolii’s. —Fedor? Aren’t you dead? —And you?
Anatolii begins to realize that he is dead and these two are ghosts. They report that the old man Mekheele died at night and went to his Sajylyk, where all his ancestors and relatives are buried. They also dream of getting there, but, either because of their sins or because their bodies were not buried, their souls were stuck in this world. Anatolii decides to get into the hallowed Sajylyk by whatever means possible.
An untrained viewer who is not familiar with the culture and worldview of Sakha will find it difficult to understand all the plot twists of this film. First of all, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the word “sajylyk”. Translated from the Sakha language, this means ‘“summer dwelling’“, which comes from the tradition of the Sakha people moving to another area for the summer, and, in the winter, returning to “kystyk”—a winter dwelling. Since Yakutia, which is located in the northeast of Russia, has a very cold and long winter, the Sakha people love summer very much. In the context of this film, Sajylyk, where there is eternal summer, is an image of the local afterlife, where local residents end up. One could call it Paradise, but, in traditional Sakha worldview, there is no division of the afterlife into Paradise and Hell. There is only this World and the Otherworld.
Here is what the scriptwriter, the famous Sakha playwright Semen Ermolaev (Sien Ökör) says about this:
In my small homeland, there is a locality called Ulakhan Sajylyk (literally, “Big Sajylyk”). This is a summer home where two families live: the Ermolaevs and the Sosins. All my ancestors: mother; father; great-grandfather Yokyor Okhonohoy; my friends Chümechi, Ujbaan Argunov; writers Rafael Bagataiskai and Legentei Sosin; are buried there on the hill. My wooden house was also transported from that Sajylyk. Therefore, when one of us dies, they say that they went straight to their Sajylyk. Some are buried in the Sajylyk Kiis Tiirbit, or in their native ulus (the different regions of Yakutia are called ulus). This is the way it is in Suol. There is no special cemetery, we live in the old-fashioned way. Initially, we had to shoot this film in my homeland, in Suol. But my son-in-law Simon Fedotov was afraid to bring trouble and dissuaded us. As a result, the film was shot elsewhere, in the Soto area. (Author's correspondence)
In the Sakha culture, there are still many taboos and rules of conduct that allow you to ensure a safe neighborhood with the world of spirits. In the film, the main character, before starting a meal in the house that he purchased, performs the ritual of feeding the Spirit of Fire—Khatan Temierije. There are many legends about how travelers who have spent the night in a house with ghosts fed the Spirit of Fire, which saved them from inevitable death. Old houses, and even more so abandoned places with the ruins of old buildings, which are called “ötökh”, are dangerous. In such places, ghosts, demons, and other evil spirits can settle. A friend of the protagonist, Nikolai, asks him: “Did they tell you anything about this house? Not discouraged? After all, the house is old, transported from Sajylyk. Are you really not afraid?” Two guys, who have been looking for a horse throughout the entire film, wander into an old house and find a birch bark dish “yaghaja” there. The younger says to the elder: “You can’t! Put it back on its place”. They immediately hear a strange sound and run away in horror.
A curious story that happened during the filming was told by the film’s producer Ruslan Vasil’ev. They filmed this episode in a real abandoned house and accidentally found a birch bark dish “yaghaja”. Nearby were some papers and a photograph of a Sakha Red Army soldier. When the film crew began to study the papers, it turned out that these were denunciations written in Soviet times. They put all the letters and photographs in this birch bark dish and decided to take everything to a museum after filming. After that, Ruslan Vasil’ev went to the city for a new batch of film stock, but, on the way, he had a sudden attack of a migraine. He realized that the spirit of that Red Army soldier was angry and did not want to publicize the sins of the past. Ruslan Vasil’ev asked for his forgiveness and promised that they would not return to that place and not take the documents to a museum. The headache immediately relented, and he was able to go further. Most of the inhabitants of Yakutia will be able to tell a similar mystical story that happened to them. This can be classified as a separate folklore genre of oral creativity, named in Sakha “suluuchai kepsetii” (literally, “stories about what happened”).
Sakha magical realism is so vast and diverse that each mystical phenomenon has its own term and properties inherent in it. For example, the two ghosts in the film are categorized as “üör”: restless souls who could not escape to the Other World. Their bodies were not buried, so they were stuck forever in this world. The ghosts advise the hero Anatolii to make sure that his body is found, otherwise the same fate awaits him. Anatolii leads the guys who were looking for a horse to the place where his body lies. But suddenly it turns out that he is still alive. The ghosts advise the hero’s soul to return to his body. He can still live! But Anatolii’s soul no longer wants to return, he dreams of getting to the cherished Sajylyk, where there are his loved ones and eternal summer.
According to Sakha mythology, a person has three souls: Ije Kut (Mother-Soul), Buor Kut (Earth-Soul), Salgyn Kut (Air-Soul). Mother-Soul is responsible for one’s heredity; Earth-Soul is responsible for the body; and Air-Soul is responsible for our mind. It is believed that Air-Soul can fly out of the body during sleep or death. Therefore, for the Sakha viewer, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the soul of Anatolii’s character walks outside the body, although the hero himself is still alive. Local audiences also expected the threat of death for the hero. There is a belief that if you have not been to the places where you were born for a long time, it is better not to return at all, since the return poses a mortally dangerous threat. Apparently, this is due to Buor Kut (Earth-Soul). The native land, which created the Earth-Soul, attracts it back and the person dies.
The mystical drama of Anatolii Vasil’ev’s Summer Homestead, made in 1992, was of great importance for the formation of the Sakha cinema’s own language. Many of today’s Sakha filmmakers watched this film when they were children and formed their basic ideas about what a Sakha reference cinema should be. This film is also valuable because it was filmed before the arrival of foreign videos and the dominance of Hollywood in public consciousness. The authors managed to capture the archaic Sakha self-awareness and create an example of pure cinema art without impurities and Western influences.
Translated from Russian by Raymond De Luca and Liubov' Borisova
Liubov' Borisova
Summer Homestead, Russia/Sakha, 1992
Production: Creative unit Severfilm
Scriptwriter: Semen Ermolaev (Sien Ökör)
Stage director: Anatolii Vasil’ev
Director of photography: Semen Vasil’ev
Sound engineer: Iakov Alexandrov
Editing: Uliana Gorokhova
Production designer: Innokentii Barakhtyrov
Producer: Ruslan Vasil’ev
Cast: Anatolii Vasil’ev, Afanasii Fedorov, Simon Fedotov, Vasilii Aprosimov, Aleksei Popov, Mariia Lukina, Innokentyii Dmitriev, Marina Dmitrieva, Alesha Popov, Vasia Okoneshnikov, Tikhon Fedorov.
Anatolii Vasil'ev: Summer Homestead (Sajylyk, 1992) reviewed by Liubov' Borisova © 2022 |