Close to Eden
| Urga Close to Eden |
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DVD cover
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| Directed by | Nikita Mikhalkov |
| Produced by |
Michel Seydoux Jean-Louis Piel René Cleitman |
| Written by |
Rustam Ibragimbekov Nikita Mikhalkov |
| Starring |
Bayaertu Badema Vladimir Gostyukhin |
| Music by | Eduard Artemyev |
| Cinematography | Vilen Kalyuta |
| Edited by | Joëlle Hache |
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Release date
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Running time
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118 minutes |
| Country | Soviet Union, France |
| Language | Mongolian Russian Mandarin |
Urga is a 1991 film by Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov. It was released in North America as Close to Eden. It depicts the friendship between a Russian truck driver and a Mongolian shepherd in Inner Mongolia. The film was an international co-production between companies based in Russia and France.
A Mongolian shepherd Gombo lives in a yurt in Inner Mongolia with his wife, three children, and mother. They are portrayed as unsophisticated and traditional people. Gombo desires relations with his wife, to try for a fourth child, which puts his wife at unease due to Chinese law. Sergei, an intoxicated, buffoonish Russian truck driver, has stranded himself by driving his truck into a river, and is picked up by Gombo, taken to his family's yurt, to join him in dinner. Gombo's family are particularly taken with Sergei's back tattoos, later revealed to be music notation for the popular waltz, "On the Hills of Manchuria". Gombo and Sergei become mutually dependent despite their language and cultural differences. Gombo and Sergei go into the nearest city together, where Gombo is supposed to buy contraceptives (condoms); buying a television set and other goods, but not contraceptives due to the drugstore staff being women. Sergei, a former army bandsman, becomes drunk and sings "On the Hills of Manchuria" in a nightclub, with the band playing from tattoos on his back. He is arrested and bailed out of jail by Gombo.
Gombo returns home, and along the way stops to eat. He has a strange dream featuring his drunken, horseback-riding relative as Genghis Khan and his wife as the Khan's wife. In the dream both he and Sergei are captured and killed and the TV set is destroyed. Gombo awakes from his dream and arrives home with the TV. He and his family switch between watching a broadcast of the President of the USA and a badly sung variety show. Gombo's wife, although saddened when learning that he bought no contraceptives, leaves the yurt, inviting him to follow her with a gesture. Gombo follows her out onto the prairie, sticking an urga (a long stick with a lasso on the end used to capture animals) into the ground in a traditional signal that a couple is being intimate. A voiceover from Gombo's fourth son, who was conceived at this time, concludes the film, and a chimney belching smoke stands where Gombo placed his urga.
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