The traditional Sakha understanding of the structure of the universe is in many respects similar to the archaic worldviews of other Eurasian cultures: the universe consists of three worlds: the Upper, Middle, and Lower. The sacred tree, Aal Luuk Mas, provides the symbolic backbone bringing these three worlds together: its canopy lies in the Upper World, its trunk in the Middle World, and its roots growing through the Lower World. The Upper World, made up of nine layers of sky, is inhabited by Ajyy gods. The Middle World belongs to humans, who are the descendants of the Ajyy tribe. Evil demons live in the Lower World.
In the Middle World, along with humans, there are many spirits that, depending on the behavior of the humans, can help or punish them. This type of storyline is often repeated in folklore, and is also reflected in Sakha cinema. In Prokopii Novogovitsyn’s film Boy and Lake (Ogho kujurduu turara, 2005), a boy asks the spirit of the lake to give him some fish to save his family from starvation. In the harsh conditions of the North, the lives of the boy and his loved ones entirely depend upon the goodwill of the spirits. Unable to withstand the stress, the child faints on the river ice. On the verge of life and death, the boy sees ghostly horsemen—the figures of his mighty ancestors. One horsemen pulls the boy’s soul up on his horse and rides away with it, symbolizing the boy’s death, and yet, the boy suddenly comes to and through sheer willpower, continues his efforts to find food for his family. Eventually, the spirit of the lake takes pity on the boy and gives him a bounty of fish. Life goes on. Another fate awaits those who do not respect the spirits. In Anatolii Sergeev’s Path of Death (Tropa smerti, 2006), for example, a group of drunken young men break a sacred shaman-tree (home to local spirits), and for this, all of them will meet an imminent death.
Sakha folklore provides a wide variety of demons and evil spirits that have appeared in numerous horror films and mystical thrillers. One of the first films of this genre, Cursed Land (Setteekh sir, 1996) by Ellei Ivanov, tells of a young family that moves to a secluded area with a bad reputation. Evil spirits take a newborn colt and engage in psychological warfare against the family. Their neighbor, an elderly woman—a typical representative of the older generation who are meant to teach the youth—tries to propitiate the evil spirits through a ceremony of feeding the spirit of fire, but an ominous hand emerges from the flame, demanding a bloody sacrifice. The old woman, deciding that she has lived long enough, voluntarily sacrifices herself and goes out to meet the demons of the night. In the morning, the family finds her dead, and the medical report claims the cause of death to be a heart attack. The young family leaves the sinister place for good.
Another popular folklore plot warns of the existence of demons that can take the form of humans. Usually this involves a traveler stopping at a house by the road, where a hospitable landlady offers dinner and an overnight stay. At some point, the traveler, having accidentally dropped something, looks under the table and notices that the landlady has hooves instead of feet—such scenes can be found in Evil Spirit (Khara d’aj, 2016) by Evgenii Osipov and Stepan Burnashev, and Naakhara (2007) by Marina Kalinina. After realizing the hospitable host has sinister motives, the next move depends on the traveler: they must lull the demon’s vigilance, pretending they hadn’t noticed anything, and then, under any pretext, get out of the house and run without looking back. A fate of being eaten alive awaits those who can’t escape or don’t realize the true nature of their host. This type of plot can be called a predator-demon.
Aleksei Romanov’s Maappa (1986), Gennadii Bagynanov’s Night Maiden (Tüüngngü kyys, 1999), and Arkadii Novikov’s Fogged Love (Tuman buolbut taptal, 2007) refer to a legend about a ghost-lover. A tired traveler falls in love with the beautiful mistress of the house where he stays the night. The two start an affair, but at some point, the woman confesses that she is the ghost of a girl who has committed suicide, and asks the traveler to bury her remains, which are still in the house. Until the body is buried, the soul of the deceased cannot depart to another world, and remains stuck in the world of the living. This type of plot can be called the wayward soul.
Another example of the wayward soul trope is Anatolii Vasiliev’s mystical thriller, Summer Homestead (Sajylyk, 1992), wherein the protagonist meets wayward souls spending eternity hoping that someday, someone will find and bury their remains. After some time, the protagonist realizes that he is also a wandering ghost; he has had a heart attack and his body is still lying somewhere in a field. Desperate and exhausted, the other ghosts advise him to do something so his body is found and buried, after which he will be able to move to another world—a personal paradise, shown in the form of a sajylyk (meadow with a summer homestead), inhabited by the serene souls of his ancestors. At the climax of the film, we find out that the protagonist’s body, barely alive, has been found and taken by car to a hospital. To fully return to life, the man’s soul needs to be reunited with his body, but he no longer wants to live. The soul runs away to find the coveted sajylyk.
According to the traditional Sakha concept, the human soul (kut) consists of 3 components:
Death is a separation of the three elements: Buor kut (Earth-soul) returns to the soil with the body, Salgyn kut (Air-soul) becomes air, Ije kut (Mother-soul) returns to the Upper World to its creator—the supreme deity, Ürüng Ajyy Tojon.
In Sajylyk, the character’s consciousness freely travels away from his body in the form of an Air-soul, despite the fact that he is still technically alive. It is believed that the Air-soul can fly out of your body during sleep and collect useful information, which explains prophetic dreams. The same can happen during a clinical death, when a person sees themselves from a distance, or during a shaman’s healing ritual, when the shaman’s Air-soul sets off on a magical journey, rising through the sky or going down to the Lower World in search of the demon that caused an illness.
Prokopii Nogovitsyn’s short film Earth-soul (Buor kut, 2007) describes an episode from the childhood of the first president of the Sakha Republic, Mikhail Nikolaev. After moving from his village to the north of Yakutia, a young boy fell seriously ill. His Earth-soul weakened after travelling far from his native land, and his Air-soul flew out of the body; the boy became delirious. To strengthen his Earth-soul, wise elders dissolved a pinch of soil from the boy’s home village in water and gave it to him to drink as medicine. The boy’s spirit grew stronger and he recovered.
The Air-soul journey theme is often touched upon in Sakha films. In a metaphorical drama by Siuzanna Oorzhak, Leaving Hong Kong (Pokidaia blagoukhaiushchuiu gavan’, 2011), a young girl living in Hong Kong can’t remember where she comes from, and cannot rid herself of a strange, calling feeling in her Mother-soul. In the final scene, her Air-soul takes a miraculous journey to reunite with her ancestors’ homeland, Yakutia.
Sakha auteur cinema has depicted bizarre tales of restless souls overcoming some sort of test in order to improve, or experience soul education, such as in the films Road (Suol, 2012) by Mikhail Lukachevskii, and Ferrum (2015) by Prokopii Burtsev. In Suol, two souls meet again and again on the road—they become acquainted, fall in love, explore and reject each other, struggle with internal fears, and experience a total catharsis before finding the harmony and happiness of family life. In Ferrum, the soul of a killer is purified through suffering, fear, encounters with demons, and the loss of loved ones. The killer’s soul finally returns to the moment of the murder—in the guise of a victim.
The theme of soul education is closely linked to practices of shamanism, which were widespread in Yakutia until the middle of the twentieth century. It was believed that before becoming a shaman, a person must suffer from a long and serious illness, a so-called “shaman’s disease,” to train and temper all three parts of the shaman’s soul. If someone could survive this test, then, after recovering, they would have the necessary knowledge to become a shaman. If they didn’t survive the test, they didn’t survive at all. In Lord Eagle (Tojon kyyl, 2018), a film by Eduard Novikov, and While There is Wind (Tyal baaryn tukhary, 2010) by Sergei Potapov, a shaman is invited to give advice on a specific situation. The shaman, through a special ritual, either enters a state of ecstasy in which they can communicate with spirits, or takes a magical journey to the Upper World to communicate with the Ayi deities. After the ritual, the shaman produces a verdict and demands a cow or bull be butchered as a ritual sacrifice. As a rule, the shaman receives a share of meat from the sacrificed animal in payment for their services.
In the drama The Lord Eagle, we see a few examples of dual beliefs, or a mixture of traditional Sakha beliefs with Russian Orthodoxy. The heroine, an elderly Sakha woman, is very devout and often prays to an icon on a shelf in her house. Nevertheless, when an eagle settles in her yard (a sacred bird for the Sakha), the old woman and her husband turn to a shaman for advice. Before his arrival, the old woman hides the icon in a trunk, so as not to offend the shaman, who is a representative of the pagan faith. She also hides the icon before the arrival of the Red Army, fearing that they will burn the icon in their attempt to promote atheism.
In the screen adaptation of a famous Sakha novel, A Childhood We’ve Never Known (Saasky kem, 2017) by Aleksei Romanov, there is a scene of a clash between shamanism and atheism. Since the novel was written during the Soviet times, the shaman is depicted negatively, in opposition to the wise and fair-minded physician, a representative of the educated Sakha intelligentsia. A poor family accidentally invites both a shaman and a physician to attend to their ill child. After seeing the doctor, the offended shaman leaves, and the doctor, trying to protect the family from the shaman’s anger, speaks to him very respectfully, saying that they both serve a single cause through different methods.
Such scenes reflect the religious and cultural eclecticism that exists in Yakutia to this day. Modern Sakha freely speak both Sakha and Russian, and easily combine faith in one God with pagan rituals. The religious dualism of Sakha directors is often reflected in curious artistic decisions. In Andrei Borisov’s epic drama, By the Will of Genghis Khan (Taina Chingis Khana, 2009), the plot largely revolves around Tengrism, until a Christian priest suddenly appears. In Boy and Lake (2005) by ethnographer Prokopii Nogovitsyn, a boy carries a large wooden fishing tool on his shoulder, like Christ carrying his cross. The long road the boy must walk, his physical suffering, and certain camera angles ensure that his fishing gear clearly resembles a cross, reinforcing the analogy. Yet, Nogovitsyn claims he didn’t seek to draw a parallel with the crucifixion of Christ, and that the equilateral cross is a symbol of Tengri, that is, One God. Finally, in the mystical drama by Arkadii Novikov, A Gull’s Cry (Khopto khahyyta, 2013), which focuses on the idea of justice, all of the characters involved in a couple’s brutal murder eventually die in accidents. Russians would call this God’s punishment, and Sakha would say that Nature has restored justice.
According to Sakha mythology, the Sakha originated from the heavenly divine horse, Johogoi Ayi. Sergei Potapov’s semi-documentary God Johogoi (D’öhögöj Ajyy, 2015), tells of a sacred ancient holiday on the summer solstice, when the Sakha, the descendants of the divine tribe, celebrate the gods of Ajyy and ask for their blessings. In Dmitrii Davydov’s drama Bonfire (Koster na vetru, 2016), the image of a Sakha horse running through the snow as the sun sets symbolizes the death of the protagonist. As the horse disappears in the cold winter fields, the fate of its owner is evident for the Sakha audience.
In Sakha culture, images of animals carry sacral and symbolic subtexts. Directors often use them as symbols as they are easily understood by the local audience. In Aleksei Ambros’ev’s Lost (Mummuttar, 2015) and Nikita Arzhakov’s Sniper Sakha (Snaiper Sakha, 2010), a bear represents not only a dangerous animal, but also Nature itself, calling the other characters to answer for their past sins, or undergo a test to learn an ethical lesson. In Viacheslav Semenov’s parable Fisherman (Balyksyt, 2005), a black dog is mentioned, which, according to Sakha beliefs, symbolizes illness or death. Soon after the black dog appears, the protagonist dies. In Eduard Novikov’s biopic drama Messenger of Heaven (Ajyy Uola, 2014), about the life and death of popular Sakha singer Aleksandr Samsonov, the scene of a falcon being released symbolizes both the death of the protagonist, and his release from the shackles of disease and prejudice. The moment of the character’s death is shown as the flight of a sacred bird, and is perceived as something poetic and sublime.
No less interesting are the superstitions and signs that provide plot point hints to the Sakha audience. For example, burnt pancakes in the drama A Gull’s Cry (2013) are a premonition of tragic events yet to come in the film. Pancakes are not only an everyday food, but also a common sacred offering—they are usually given to the spirit of fire (to curry its favor), and their round shape is associated with solar symbolism. The return of an elderly protagonist to his native village after a long absence in Summer Homestead (1992), gives the audience reason to expect the man’s sudden death, as his birthplace will likely attract his Earth-soul. Therefore, according to the folk cultural codes, it is usually advised not to leave your birthplace for too long a time, or not to return if you’ve been away very long.
When the protagonist of Bonfire (2016) begins washing the floor after his son is taken to prison, the audience immediately understands that his son won’t return alive, because according to folk customs, the floor is washed only after the deceased has been taken out of the house. When the protagonist gives a knife to the father of the man killed by his son, and that man doesn’t give him a coin in exchange, as the custom demands, it becomes obvious that their friendship is over and there will be no reconciliation between them. Sakha viewers complained about the abundance of clues in the film, which they considered spoilers.
Due to its geographical isolation and specific ethnic culture, the mentality of the Sakha still retains its unique identity. This is why neither Hollywood nor Russian films can exert the same strong influence over Sakha audiences as Sakha cinema. This is basically the secret of the audience’s love for Sakha cinema.
Translated from Russian by Kyunnei Filippova
This paper has previously been published in: Sakha Cinema. The World of Mysterious Nature and Myth. 2017. Eds. Sergei Anashkin, Sardana Savvina, and Jin Park. 145-150. Busan: BIFF. KinoKultura's editor Birgit Beumers would like to thank BIFF for permission to publish this translation in this issue.
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