Metacritic Film

Khadak

Starring Tsetsegee Byamba, Dugarsuren Dagvadorj, Banzar Damchaa, Tserendarizav Dashnyam, and Batzul Khayankhyarvaa

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

LifeSize Entertainment
Drama
104 minutes | Color
Belgium / Germany
Released In Theaters October 12, 2007

Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, Khadak tells the epic story of Bagi, a young nomad confronted with his destiny to become a shaman. A plague strikes the animals, and the nomads are forcibly relocated to desolate mining towns. Bagi saves the life of a beautiful coal thief, Zolzaya, and together they reveal that the plague was a lie fabricated to eradicate nomadism. A sublime revolution ensues. (Bo Films)

WRITTEN BY
Peter Brosens
Jessica Hope Woodworth

DIRECTED BY
Peter Brosens
Jessica Hope Woodworth

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

53 / 100

Critic Reviews

75 New York Post
The film's leisurely pace and abstract format isn't meant for the multiplex crowd, but rather for adventurous moviegoers. It took guts to make Khadak and to give it a theatrical release. It might take even more guts to seek it out.
75 Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
It’s slow--make that very slow--and the final half hour or so is mystifying and tedious. But it gorgeously recalls Fellini and “Koyaanisqatsi” and hauntingly pits ancient tradition against science, oppression and industrial rot.
63 New York Daily News
Even when their picture wanders from any reasonable path, it's never less than stunning to look at.
50 Variety Leslie Felperin
Beads together complex ideas and gorgeously wrought segments like pearls on a string, but, with its emblematic characters and sometimes baffling, mystical storyline, pic ultimately remains emotionally distant.
50 Chicago Reader
This is well staged and photographed, with stirring aerial images and balletic pans and dolly shots, but the story is muddled by the arrival of a free-spirited girl and her musician pals, 60s-style longhairs battling a government conspiracy.
50 San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
An ambitious attempt at cinematic poetry, and how much they have succeeded depends on how well you can sort out its surrealistic meanings.
50 The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz
A trippy spectacle. It boldly tries to find visuals to describe complex metaphysical and political concepts. But the results often suggest aestheticized eye candy, along the lines of Ken Russell’s “Altered States” or Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” and its sequels.
40 Village Voice Nick Pinkerton
Khadak recedes deeper and deeper into esoterica as it progresses.

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