If Only I Could Hibernate – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Zoljargal Purevdash
Writer – Zoljargal Purevdash
Stars – Taivanbat Alexandar, Batmandakh Batchuluun, Tuguldur Batsaikhan

Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer prize-winning Angela’s Ashes (1996), and subsequent film (1999), all of twenty-five years ago, would for some capture the prize for depictions of adversity and struggle in the face of abject poverty.   McCourt depicts a world of grimness in 1930s New York and 1940s Limerick it would appear that conditions in 2020s Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, are little better, compounded by a numbing winter climate.

A talented teenager set apart from his peers through his innate ability and academic intelligence, is held back by his home life poverty –a poverty compounded by what appears to be a feckless mother struggling with her own demons of drink and unhappiness.  The challenges of the so-called home  – confined as they are in a yurt – not the yurts of holiday glamping, are added to when his mother ups and returns to the countryside from which they have recently arrived.  Illiterate and defensive she has no grasp of awareness of the opportunities that her son could have through education, although this is recognised by his sympathetic teachers.  She not only abandons the talented son but two other children, for whom he now assumes responsibility – from sourcing food, cooking after a fashion, and finding all essential coal to keep the yurt with some form of warmth.  And that is essentially the core narrative; his day-to-day struggle to maintain his own academic trajectory, dreams and aspirations while keeping himself and his siblings alive.  It could all be so grim, but it is not Ken Loach and there is humour aplenty in the little day-to-day interactions between the siblings, who seem oblivious to the actual conditions in which they live.

For all the poverty and the obvious injustice of the prevailing system that allows such conditions to be tolerated, there is scant bitterness on display.  The conditions are miserable in the extreme if we allow ourselves to imagine the biting cold and the shocking coal-based air pollution.  But this is not a miserable film in any sense of the word.  Learning triumphs over ignorance, good conquers evil, kind deeds win out over mean ones and so on.  The message is simple and, of course, familiar through time and across cultures.  And yet the message is not slight, it is actually considered and positive.  Horrible circumstances do not in themselves beget horrible people.  The main difference in this instance is that we are exposed to comparable values in a city and country seldom depicted in cinema available in Europe. Evocative camera work, superb acting and direction, create an experience which is ultimately encouraging and life-enhancing.