Rise of Glory
Rise of Glory (Russian: Восхождение славы; Iradi: Danktyn Kötörülüshü) is a 1979 Soviet historical epic film directed by Talgat Osmonov for Talasfilm Studios. Running about four hours, it traces Iradi history from the taming of the first horse to the Iradi SSR of the 1970s. Its unconventional form baffled audiences. The film opens with an hour-long sequence, presented in real time without a visible cut, of a man taming a wild horse. Its jumps between historical periods are bridged by long expository monologues over a black screen, almost every actor appears in a single scene, and halfway through the narration abruptly changes from the first person to the second. There were reports of a riot in a Leningrad cinema during a screening. Opinion on the film remains sharply divided.[1][2]
Synopsis
The film is organized as a sequence of episodes rather than a continuous story:
- The first horse. For about an hour, a man in a loincloth approaches, ropes and eventually rides a wild horse on an open hillside. There is no dialogue or music, and there are no visible cuts. Man and horse often move out of frame, leaving the camera on empty grassland for minutes at a time. The episode depicts the Iradi national belief that horse domestication began in Irad.
- Antiquity to the Kokand era. Short episodes depict the "heavenly horses" of Dayuan, Sogdian merchants on the Silk Road, the coming of the Turkic khaganates and Christian missionaries, the Mongol conquest and Kokand rule. Each is introduced by several minutes of narration over a black screen.
- 1916 and the revolution. An episode set during the 1916 flight over the mountain passes, after the Semirechye Revolt, features Almaz Sarybaev as a clan chieftain in a single fourteen-minute scene. Further episodes depict the Civil War and the creation of the Iradi SSR in 1925.
- The Soviet present. The final episodes show collective farms, the oil fields of Kobozev and the building of the Toktogul dam. The film ends on a wide shot of a horse herd grazing beneath power lines.
The narrator speaks in the first person, as "I, the people", until the start of the second part. From there he addresses the viewer as "you" until the end. Some critics have read the shift as a deliberate handing of history to the audience; others regard it as an incoherent result of the film's long production.[2]
Production
Rise of Glory was commissioned by Talasfilm in 1972 for the fiftieth anniversary of the Iradi SSR in 1975. Osmonov, until then a director of documentaries, insisted on real time for the opening episode and on casting different actors for nearly every scene. Production overran by four years.[3]
A 35 mm camera magazine of the period held only about ten minutes of film, so the opening hour could not have been shot in one take. Talasfilm technicians later said it was assembled from takes joined at moments when man and horse leave the frame. The horse was a semi-feral mare from a stud in the Talas Alatau foothills, and the episode took nearly three weeks to film.[3]
Release
The republican film committee accepted the film in 1979, partly because its final hour glorified Soviet construction. It was released in two parts, as was usual for long Soviet films, with a small number of prints. It played in Talas and Kobozev in the autumn of 1979 and reached Moscow and Leningrad in 1980.[1]
Accounts circulated of a riot in a Leningrad cinema, said to have begun when audience members demanded refunds during the opening hour. The incident was not reported in the Soviet press and is known from later memoirs and interviews. Historians treat the details as unconfirmed.[2]
Reception
Contemporary audiences were largely baffled, and attendance outside Irad was low. Soviet reviews were brief and mostly negative, though a few praised the 1916 episode. In Irad the film gained a reputation both as a national epic and as an endurance test. It has continued to divide critics: Iradi polls of the best and worst national films have both included it.[2][4]
Legacy
The 1916 episode was the first extended depiction in a Soviet film of the flight over the passes. Writers on national memory cite it as an early public treatment of an event that had rarely been discussed openly.[4] The opening hour has been quoted in Iradi performance art, including Mor-Wave concerts that projected it in full.
The Talasfilm Archives completed a restoration of the full version in 2019. Complete screenings remain rare. Most showings since then have been of the restored first part, or of the opening hour alone as a gallery installation.[3]
References
- ^ Soviet Academy of Arts (1989). Masters of Central Asian Stage and Screen. Iskusstvo, Moscow, pp. 226–231.
- ^ Central Asian Review of Screen Studies (2019). 'Four Hours of Glory: Narration and Endurance in Osmonov's Epic.' Vol. 13, Iss. 2, pp. 77–101.
- ^ Talasfilm Archives and Film Preservation Institute (2019). Rise of Glory: Restoration Notes. Talas.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2020). Historical Memory and the 1916 Tragedy in Iradi Cinema, pp. 88–114.