MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Loneliest Planet,’ Directed by Julia Loktev (movies.nytimes.com)

(movies.nytimes.com) Two Hikers Who Need to Watch Their Steps

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: October 25, 2012

We never learn very much about Alex and Nica, the young couple (played by Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) at the center of “ The Loneliest Planet.” As cute as a pair of kittens and obviously in love, they are backpacking through Georgia — the former Soviet republic, not the American state — a few months before their wedding. Their interactions are playful and tender. They play with local children, conjugate Spanish verbs and have an affectionate, sexy teasing rapport with each other. Where they live, what they do for a living, the quality of their ideas or the nature of their opinions — none of this is especially relevant.

lex and Nica are thus somewhat paradoxical creatures, at once highly specific and maddeningly abstract. “The Loneliest Planet,” the second fictional feature directed by Julia Loktev, is rigorously committed to a particular kind of minimalism. Ms. Loktev is highly, even morbidly attentive to physical detail, to registering the sounds, colors and textures of the natural world and the tiniest nuances of human behavior. She also ruthlessly purges her movies of the kind of psychological expression and narrative exposition that most filmmakers depend on. Her stories take place in a vacuum that is also recognizably and palpably the real world.

Her previous film, “ Day Night Day Night” (2006), follows a young woman through Midtown Manhattan. She is even more of an abstraction than Alex and Nica: all the viewer knows about her is that she carries a backpack full of explosives and is planning a suicide bombing in Times Square. The documentary background and the camera’s unflinching attention to her every step, gesture and facial expression both create suspense and induce a kind of philosophical reverie. Who is this person? Why is she doing this? What does it all mean?

Similar questions hover around “The Loneliest Planet,” even though the dramatic stakes seem lower. The title evokes a series of guidebooks popular among adventurous travelers, and Alex and Nica, setting out for a hike in the Caucasus Mountains with a local guide named Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze), seem to fit that profile. They are daring and carefree but not especially reckless, and they tramp across a rocky, empty landscape with easygoing determination. Occasionally the guide tries to make conversation, telling a labored dirty joke or a puzzling anecdote about buying a car.

Every step carries a premonition that something might happen, a sense of foreboding and latent violence that Ms. Loktev creates by amplifying ordinary sounds, applying small doses of portentous music and cutting abruptly between shots. Something eventually does happen. I can’t be more specific, partly because I don’t want to spoil a surprise and also because the specifics don’t necessarily matter.

What matters is the effect of the event on Alex and Nica. It either opens a fissure in their relationship or reveals one that had been there all along, though those are only two of the many possibilities. The episode — which lasts a few seconds and is never spoken of afterward — might just be a crazy story they will tell at their wedding, or something they’ll fight about later, or forget about entirely.

Such speculation is as vain as wondering about what these people were doing before they went to Georgia, though just as inevitable. Their isolation from each other, from us and from Dato is part of the point of the film, which is (speaking of paradoxes) aggressive in its subtlety. It is gripping and haunting, but also coy and elusive.

The Loneliest Planet

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Julia Loktev, based on “Expensive Trips Nowhere” from the collection “God Lives in St. Petersburg” by Tom Bissell; director of photography, Inti Briones; edited by Michael Taylor and Ms. Loktev; music by Richard Skelton; production design by Rabiah Troncelliti; produced by Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Helge Albers and Marie Therese Guirgis; released by Sundance Selects. In Manhattan at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and Georgian, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Gael García Bernal (Alex), Hani Furstenberg (Nica) and Bidzina Gujabidze (Dato).

KINO: The Loneliest Planet. Eine Trekkingtour im Kaukasus mit ungeahnten Folgen.(georgia-insight.eu)

(georgia-insight.eu) Ab 03. Januar 2013 im Kino!

USA/Deutschland 2011
113 Min
digital - 1,66:1 - Farbe - stereo
Originalsprache englisch

Alex, Nica und ihr Bergführer (Bidzina Gujabidze), Foto: Camino Filmverleih

Am 03.01. startet THE LONELIEST PLANET in den deutschen Kinos. In ihrem preisgekrönten Film folgt Regisseurin Julia Loktev zwei jungen Rucksacktouristen, die vor ihrer Hochzeit in den USA eine Reise durch den Kaukasus unternehmen.

Die jungen Traveller Alex und Nica reisen vor ihrer geplanten Hochzeit nach Georgien, um eine Trekkingtour durch den Kaukasus zu unternehmen. Ein einheimischer Bergführer (Bidzina Gujabidze) führ sie in die abgelegene Wildnis und schon bald zeigen sich erste Risse in ihrer Beziehung, ihren Wertvorstellungen bis das Paar sich komplett in Frage stellt.

Der Film thematisiert vordergründig die Beziehung zwischen den jungen Reisenden und zeigt in starken Bildern die eindrucksvolle Landschaft Georgiens. Im Kern ist es eine Geschichte, die von Verrat handelt, versehentlich und absichtlich begangen, von Männlichkeit, Versagen und den Unwägbarkeiten des Verzeihens. 

Einen bedeutenden Part in dem sinnlichen Drama übernimmt dabei die raue Schönheit des Kaukasus selbst:

"...die Smaragdgrünen Berge des Kaukasus sind imposant und dazu samtweich, üppig und zugleich nackt. Man kann sich nirgends verstecken. Es gibt keine Bäume nur grünes Gras, durchzogen von orangenen Schwefelquellen.

Je härter die Emotionen werden, desto bezaubernder wird die Landschaft. Sie hat schon Michail Lermontov bezaubert, Arthur Koestler, Knut Hamsun und nun bezaubert sie uns." (Julia Loktev, Drehbuch u. Regie)

Hintergrund

Die Regisseurin Julia Loktev wurde in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in Russland geboren. Als sie neun Jahre alt war, emigrierte ihre Familie in die USA. Zu ihren liebsten Erinnerungen zählen Fotos und die Erzählungen der Eltern von einem Urlaub in Georgien und den Wanderungen im Kaukasus:

"Georgien war das Ferienparadies der Sowjetunion, die sprichwürtliche Gastfreundschaft der Menschen ebenso wie die Schönheit der Natur übten eine fast schon magische Anziehungskraft aus." (Julia Loktev)

Nach ihrem Studium reiste Julia Loktev selbst ein halbes Jahr lang alleine durch Zentralasien und stellt sich den Herausforderungen und "Peinlichkeiten" die einem als Fremden in einem Land begegnen, dessen Kultur und Sprache man nicht kennt.

Die männliche Hauptrolle spielt Gael Garcia Bernal, bekannt als Che in "Die Reise des jungen Che" und und Jim Jarmuschs "The Limits of Control". Auf das Filmangebot anwortete Gael Garcia Bernal, er wollte in den Kaukasus reisen, seit er in der Grundschule Lermontows "Ein Held unserer Zeit" gelesen habe".

Der Trekking-Guide wird von dem Georgier Bidzina Gujabidze gespielt. Der studierte Geologe ist der wohl bekannteste Bergsteiger Georgiens. Er hat über 300 Gipfel in den verschiedensten Ländern der Erde bestiegen, darunter sechs Achttausender. Er ist Präsident des georgischen Alpinistenvereins und trainiert die georgische Nationalmannschaft junger Bergsteiger.

Die Geschichte des Films basiert auf eine Kurzgeschichte "Expensive Trips Nowhere" aus dem Erzählband "God Lives in St. Petersburg" von Tom Bissell, wurde aber von Julia Loktev anhand von eigenen Erfahrungen und Erzählungen weiterentwickelt. Der Film erhielt zahlreiche Preise und Auszeichnungen.

Als Independent Film wird THE LONELIEST PLANET insgesamt in nur 21 Kinos in Deutschland starten. Die großen Städte sind natürlich dabei: Berlin, Hamburg, München, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Aachen, Dresden, Bremen, Saarbrücken, Wiesbaden...

Finden Sie hier das nächste Kino in Ihrer Nähe:

>> weiter zum Kinofinder

Quelle: CAMINO Filmverleih

Trailer anschauen

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(hollywoodreporter.com) The Loneliest Planet: Film Review

A patience-testing, character-based three hander of pre-marital strife amid spectacular Caucasian wilderness.

Director/screenwriter: Julia Loktev

Cast: Hani Furstenburg, Gael Garcia Bernal, Bidzina Gujabidze

Gael Garcia Bernal and Nani Furstenberg star as adventurers in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia in Russian-born, Colorado-raised writer/director Julia Loktev's analysis of a relationship imperilled by communication breakdowns.

LOCARNO — A very old story is updated to the trans-globalized 21st century in The Loneliest Planet, the slow-burning, distinctive second feature from Russian-born, Colorado-raised writer/director Julia Loktev following 2006's well-received Day Night Day Night. Widely regarded as one of the more notable films in a generally underwhelming Locarno competition, the Caucasus-set three-hander, while quite demanding festival fare, has some limited commercial prospects thanks to the presence of Mexico's international art-house heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal in one of the small handful of speaking parts. Not that there's very much dialogue in this steadily taxing analysis of a relationship imperilled by communication breakdowns.

Loosely inspired by Ernest Hemingway's 1936 short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, itself inspired by an actual incident in pre-World War 2 Africa, and filmed with Gregory Peck in 1947, Tim Bissell's tale Expensive Trips Nowhere forms the basis of Loktev's script (with some crucial alterations.) Each of these narratives involves a couple from North America venturing into an impoverished but scenic corner of the globe, where they hire a local to act as their guide. The male half of the couple reveals his essential cowardice in a crisis situation, after which his lover ends up in the guide's arms.

Here we follow the presumably Mexican Alex (Garcia Bernal) and flame-haired Nica (Israel-based American Hani Furstenberg) on a trip around the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia a few months before their impending wedding. Their gruffly friendly guide Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze) navigates the trio around some varied, extremely beautiful terrain, vast expanses almost devoid of animals or people, with occasional decayed evidence of Soviet-era architectural horrors.

There are various minor culture clashes along the way, but the trip is largely an enjoyable one until a chance encounter with a trio of peasants, one of them casually carrying an automatic weapon across his shoulders. The consequences of this event, which comes just before half-way through the running time, reverberate through all that follows: largely wordless sequences in which Alex very slowly tries to win his way back into the shell-shocked Nica's affections. Loktev and her co-editor Michael build this second half around a series of awkward silences, interrupted at regular intervals by Richard Skelton's surging orchestral score.

But The Loneliest Planet — its title an ironic reference to the Lonely Planet travel-guides so beloved by the type of “adventurous” backpackers which Alex and Nica represent — has one near fatal structural flaw. The pivotal scene involving Alex, Nica and the automatic weapon is much too clumsily handled given its importance in terms of how the story and characterizations are to develop.

In Bissell's story (where both main characters are American), the Alex equivalent gently pushes Nica into the line of fire. Here it's a quick, instinctive movement, which he near instantly rectifies, placing his own forehead in front of the gun. The scene looks over-rehearsed and unconvincing. Other aspects of the scene are also naggingly unsatisfactory, such as the (unsubtitled) dialogue, evidently a discussion of Nica, which precedes the gunplay.

This misfire sequence casts a shadow of implausibility over all that follows. Thus Nica's extended silent treatment of her guilt-consumed fiancé feels more like a scriptwriting contrivance than an organic development of what we've seen up to that point.

But there's no mistaking the skill with which sometime video-artist Loktev and her cinematographer Inti Briones (also one of two camera-operators) combine the couple's quiet movement towards reconciliation — Dato's presence providing a wild-card element — with their arduous physical trek through Georgia's wild landscapes.

Though flawed, The Loneliest Planet is confidently handled and commendably audacious in its deployment of repetition and duration though these techniques are used to such an extent that many viewers may regard the near two-hour picture as another sort of “expensive trip nowhere.”

If nothing else, it does represent a startling change of mood and pace after the frenetically teeming city locations of the claustrophobically suspenseful terrorist character-study Day Night Day Night. Overall The Loneliest Planet isn't any more satisfying than its wildly different predecessor but does confirm that the 42-year-old Loktev, while still some way from the finished article, remains a filmmaker to watch.

Venue: Locarno Film Festival

Production companies: Flying Moon, Parts and Labor, Wild Invention

Cast: Hani Furstenburg, Gael Garcia Bernal, Bidzina Gujabidze

Director/screenwriter: Julia Loktev

Based on a short story by: Tim Bissell

Producers: Helge Albers, Marie-Therese Guirgis, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy

Executive producers: Dallas Brennan, Shelby Alan Brown, Rabinder Sira, Chris Gilligan, Hunter Gray, Gregory P Shockro

Director of photography: Inti Briones

Production designer: Rabiah Troncelliti

Costume designer: Rabiah Troncelliti

Music: Richard Skelton

Editors: Julia Loktev, Michael Taylor

Sales: The Match Factory, Cologne

No rating, 113 minutes

More Links:

NYFF Spotlight: The Loneliest Planet (filmlinc.com) 

The Loneliest Planet (critic.de)