It always gives a thrilling feeling when a new country is introduced at the Far East Film Festival, especially when the country in question is one of the most remote Asian countries and the film is far from expected clichés. If the audiences expect to see vast grassland, yurts and warriors riding wild horses, they might be disappointed when they see this Mongolian film. So be warned!
Operation Tatar presents none of the elements usually offered by Mongolia-set films, which have travelled to festivals and international screens in the past years, such as the German productions The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003), The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005) and the Russian-Kazakhstan Genghis Khan biopic Mongol (2007). With Operation Tatar, you get a ticket for a purely urban gangster comedy ride, and you’ll find out that it’s smarter than you could imagine at the first glance.
Taivanaa is an ordinary salary man working for a bank in today’s Ulaanbaatar. His life takes a hasty and bitter direction when he gets fired. How could he reveal his situation to his beloved wife when she is totally devoting herself to their daughter who suffers from a sudden cancer?
It demands an extensive and expensive care to save the adorable kid from the tumour. Then comes Tulga, a friend of Taivanaa’s childhood and fine connoisseur of action cinema and cheap robbery novels. After a lot of brainstorming sessions (and bottles of vodka), the two men decide to look for partners to rob Taivanaa’s former bank. They have a perfect plan, they form a fantastic team which includes the best IT guy and the fastest driver around. The job seems to be a piece of cake. However, they will soon learn that theory is one thing, practice is another.
Operation Tatar is not only a good example of what the relatively new-born private film sector of Mongolia is producing, but gives us a glimpse of the local urban youngsters’ taste. For decades during the Communist era, cinema in Mongolia as well as other sectors of society was modelled after the Soviet system. Mongol Kino, the state studio established in 1935 used to produce with public funds under the guidelines of the party. There were some directors who played dangerously with the rules, as was the case in USSR or China. Filmmakers and technicians were trained in Moscow or Eastern European schools, cinemas (either fixed or mobile) were spread all over the vast land, and films were seriously considered a tool for mass education.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fast irruption of market economy, everything changed. Mongol Kino cessed to produce films and the former Children Cinema House in Ulaanbaatar now houses the stock market. Private companies took over most of the media sector, including film production. With a tiny population of just 3 millions, it is quite amazing that 10 to 15 local films are commercially released every year alongside Hollywood and Korean productions.
As is the case with Baatar Bat-Ulzii, most young Mongolian directors have a television, music video or advertisement background, and films are financed by businessmen and products placement. Operation Tatar was backed by a barbecue restaurant chain owner, and the audience will recognize a famous sportswear brand while watching the film.
Operation Tatar has certain freshness, a sense of total freedom and even self-mockery of gangster genre films in its first half. These aspects remind the audience of the kind of freedom that used to be found in Korean and Thai cinema a decade ago when creativity and audacity compensate for financial limits. Could Mongolian cinema be the next bonanza? It’s hard to tell. We’ll have to wait a few years to have the answer.
Jérémy Segay