Close to Eden

Aka: Urga / Territory of Love
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Release date: 1991
Language: Mongolian / Russian / Mandarin
Subtitle: English (Soft-subbed)
Genre: Drama

Starring:
Bayaertu
Badema
Vladimir Gostyukhin

Synopsis:
The Mongolian shepherd Gombo lives in a yurt in Inner Mongolia with his wife, three children, and mother. They are content with their uncomplicated rural lives but Gombo wants his city born wife to bear a fourth child. A Russian truck driver named Sergei is stranded nearby, and finds his way to their house, where he and Gombo become friends despite their language and cultural differences. Gombo and Sergei go into the nearest city together, where Gombo buys a television set and attempts to buy contraceptives, but decides not to when he realizes everyone at the drugstore is a woman. Sergei, a former army bandsman, sings "Hills of Manchuria" in a nightclub, as the band plays from the sheet music tattooed on his back. He is arrested and then bailed out of jail by Gombo.
Gombo returns home, and along the way stops and takes a nap. He has a strange dream featuring his drunken, horse riding relative as Genghis Khan and his wife as Ghenghis Khan's wife. In the dream both he and Sergei are captured and killed. Gombo wakes and arrives home, with the television, and he and his family watch alternately the President of America speaking and a badly sung variety show. Gombo and his wife go into the fields, bringing the Urga (a long stick with a lasso on the end used to capture animals) which is then stuck into the ground far away in the fields, a signal that a couple is being intimate. A voice over from Gombo's fourth son concludes the film with the image of a chimney belching smoke into the air in the place where Gombo's Urga was once placed.
(Credit: wikipedia)

Review:
A beautiful film about a beautiful family that only loses a little magic with the cultural realism subplot involving a Russian road builder. You'll feel like you visited the steppes of Mongolia.

Trailer:


Related Links:
More Info: IMDb
Download Links: 01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - sub

Curiosities:
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.

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