Jol Review
Filmmaker Darezhan_Omirbaev, from Kazakhstan, has been compared to Robert_Bresson, based on the lack of sentiment or emotional manipulation in his two earlier features, Cardiogram and Killer. The Road is a much lighter work, similar to the work of Palestinian filmmaker Elia_Suleiman in its amusing self-effacement and sense of narrative play. The Road is an episodic journey with a filmmaker, Amir (Jamshed_Usmonov), as he travels to visit his ailing mother. As the filmmaker drives (many shots through the windshield as he speeds through the countryside), he dreams, he imagines, he remembers, he works out a sequence from another film in his head, and it all gets conflated together in the somewhat puzzling mishmash of The Road. There's a nice depiction of the creative process, as a story Amir hears on the radio about fearsome Mongol tribes or an impromptu volleyball game he sees by the roadside become incorporated into his cinematic musings. There's a hilariously self-deprecating sequence in which Amir is introduced as a cinematic hero before pompously introducing his new film to a rapt audience. But the projectionist accidentally starts a karate movie in place of Amir's film, and the audience so enjoys the beginning of the karate movie that they demand to see the whole thing. The bits and pieces of The Road seem haphazardly put together, but the relatively short film maintains enough narrative drive to hold one's interest, and builds into a surprisingly lucid account of one man's creative struggle. Josh Ralske, Rovi
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