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Striking and poetic, To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die confirms director Djamshed Usmonov s (Angel On The Right) position as one of the brightest talents of post-Soviet cinema. Sparer, bleaker and much more unsettling than his previous films it stars Khurched Golibekov as the sullen, wide-eyed Kamal, who has been married for a few months, but is unable to consummate his marriage. Learning that there is nothing physically wrong with him after visiting a doctor, Kamal sets off to the city in an attempt to cure impotence. With his child-like, country-boy naivete, he struggles to meet anyone until a chance encounter on a bus when he picks up a young married Russian factory worker. This accidental meeting takes him on a far more troubling and darker journey than he was counting on... Likened by critics to Krzysztof Kieslowski s A Short Film About Love, Usmanov's absolutely sure-footed direction and storytelling make for a film that gently, gradually pulls the rug out from under our feet, in a classic example of less-is-more film-making.
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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Russian ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Twenty-year-old Kamal has been married for several months, but the marriage has yet to be consummated. Learning from a doctor that there's nothing physically wrong with him, Kamal sets off to town in search of another woman... SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Cannes Film Festival, ...To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die ( Bihisht faqat baroi murdagon ) ( Pour aller au ciel, il faut mourir )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
After having had a stressful day, I was in dire need of a `no brainer' piece of entertainment. Nothing too heavy man! Perhaps a title like "To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die," should have set the alarm bells ringing, but if it did I must have slept through them. As you may have guessed this was not the easiest of films to get to grips with, and is the sort of film that may well divide opinion. But either way it is certainly something a bit different from the norm. I suppose it would be best described as a bit of Tajik art house film noir.
The film is set in Tajikistan, another far flung province of Russia where the director Djamshed Usmanov happens to hail from. No Borat jokes please! It concerns a young man who has embarrassingly been unable to consummate his marriage. He therefore heads to the bright city lights in the hope of gaining the necessary experience. This puts our Tajik country boy in contact with a few undesirables, one of whom registers dangerously high on the Richter scale of undesirability. The lad gets into ever deepening and very dangerous water.
Whilst the film certainly has an unusual setting in Asiatic Russia, it does not really deliver on the entertainment factor, or on the interesting message front. The film makes rather uncomfortable viewing at times, especially when the young man begins to stalk women. Some people may find this a little disturbing. The film begins on a theme of one mans frustrated sexual neurosis, and then morphs into something altogether even more sinister, as violent crime and murder enter into the story. The films lead actor Khurched Golibekov, does well for someone with no acting experience. Perhaps this rawness accounted for his look of blank bewilderment as he gets sucked deeper into a whirlpool of headaches. I must be honest here and say that the film did not do a lot for me. It is just too austere and dark a picture for my taste. Perhaps I should have just watched "Where Eagles Dare" again!
The film is set in Tajikistan, another far flung province of Russia where the director Djamshed Usmanov happens to hail from. No Borat jokes please! It concerns a young man who has embarrassingly been unable to consummate his marriage. He therefore heads to the bright city lights in the hope of gaining the necessary experience. This puts our Tajik country boy in contact with a few undesirables, one of whom registers dangerously high on the Richter scale of undesirability. The lad gets into ever deepening and very dangerous water.
Whilst the film certainly has an unusual setting in Asiatic Russia, it does not really deliver on the entertainment factor, or on the interesting message front. The film makes rather uncomfortable viewing at times, especially when the young man begins to stalk women. Some people may find this a little disturbing. The film begins on a theme of one mans frustrated sexual neurosis, and then morphs into something altogether even more sinister, as violent crime and murder enter into the story. The films lead actor Khurched Golibekov, does well for someone with no acting experience. Perhaps this rawness accounted for his look of blank bewilderment as he gets sucked deeper into a whirlpool of headaches. I must be honest here and say that the film did not do a lot for me. It is just too austere and dark a picture for my taste. Perhaps I should have just watched "Where Eagles Dare" again!
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I had never watched films with sub titles before, but really enjoy the ones I have bought. story lines are very real, and acting enjoyable to watch
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
Disappointing plot in this glimpse of obscure Central Asian country
15 April 2011
TO GET TO HEAVEN, FIRST YOU HAVE TO DIE (2006) is a film by Jamshed Usmonov set in the director's native Tajikistan. Kamal (Khurshed Golibekov) is a young man who has recently married, but he suffers from impotence and has been unable to consummate his marriage. After three months, he visits a doctor and then undertakes to learn the art of love from some older woman in the capital. The first half of the film has him stalking various women around Dushanbe. This odyssey in an American film would probably have been portrayed in a goofy underdog fashion, but Kamal's attempts are creepy, though we do feel his pain.
About halfway through the film, Kamal ends up sleeping with the wife (Dinara Drukarova) of a thug (Maruf Pulodzoda). This lowlife finds out, he doesn't mind as he had been separated from his wife for some time anyway, and takes Kamal under his wing as they burgle their way around town. After witnessing the full extent of his partner's brutality, Kamal turns on him in a bloody fashion, which happens to cure his sexual dysfunction.
All in all, I can't recommend TO GET TO HEAVEN to general audiences. This isn't the first film I've seen by a young director that begins in one way and then transitions too suddenly into mobsters and violence. Yes, I get the Oedipal allusions and the probing of the male psyche, but the plot arc chosen for this study just screams "immature scriptwriter". The cinematography is also unimaginative.
I could compliment only two aspects, which will probably only interest a rather niche audience. One is that I'm bound for Tajikistan in less than a week as I write this, and there are few internationally available films from the country, so I guess TO GET TO HEAVEN was useful as a glimpse of Tajikistan. The acting by Drukarova and Pulodzoda was competent, and perhaps the same could be said for Golibekov if the character he portrays weren't too cringingly awkward to really appreciate.
About halfway through the film, Kamal ends up sleeping with the wife (Dinara Drukarova) of a thug (Maruf Pulodzoda). This lowlife finds out, he doesn't mind as he had been separated from his wife for some time anyway, and takes Kamal under his wing as they burgle their way around town. After witnessing the full extent of his partner's brutality, Kamal turns on him in a bloody fashion, which happens to cure his sexual dysfunction.
All in all, I can't recommend TO GET TO HEAVEN to general audiences. This isn't the first film I've seen by a young director that begins in one way and then transitions too suddenly into mobsters and violence. Yes, I get the Oedipal allusions and the probing of the male psyche, but the plot arc chosen for this study just screams "immature scriptwriter". The cinematography is also unimaginative.
I could compliment only two aspects, which will probably only interest a rather niche audience. One is that I'm bound for Tajikistan in less than a week as I write this, and there are few internationally available films from the country, so I guess TO GET TO HEAVEN was useful as a glimpse of Tajikistan. The acting by Drukarova and Pulodzoda was competent, and perhaps the same could be said for Golibekov if the character he portrays weren't too cringingly awkward to really appreciate.
In a search of a way
26 Aug 2009
Strange land, strange people, strange deeds.
Somewhere in modern Tajikistan, a traditionally poor then Soviet outskirt turned recently into a semi-Islamic state resting in Northern Himalayas, young man- legally, 20y.o. teen in the UK and the most of a British Commonwealth got married with no emotional and physical connections to a bride.
Trying to lose virginity, he became involved in a string of tragic criminal events embedded on a general landscape of a mafia reality the Commonwealth of the Independent States presented at the fall of the twentieth century especially.
It is a sexy, clever, well done work of much deeper context, rather than playing the pillow games by a "traditional" way, surely.
Highly recommended.
Somewhere in modern Tajikistan, a traditionally poor then Soviet outskirt turned recently into a semi-Islamic state resting in Northern Himalayas, young man- legally, 20y.o. teen in the UK and the most of a British Commonwealth got married with no emotional and physical connections to a bride.
Trying to lose virginity, he became involved in a string of tragic criminal events embedded on a general landscape of a mafia reality the Commonwealth of the Independent States presented at the fall of the twentieth century especially.
It is a sexy, clever, well done work of much deeper context, rather than playing the pillow games by a "traditional" way, surely.
Highly recommended.
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