Steppenwolf, by the extremely prolific and proficient Yerzhanov, has several sources of inspiration: John Ford, samurai stories and Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name, as well as Kazakh folklore. The film follows two characters who reluctantly team up with one goal: to find a child who has been kidnapped. The settings are desolate though beautiful, the violence brutal and the film virtuously constructed, with characters as intense as they are striking.
I can’t speak for you, only for myself, but I hope you’ll relate to what I’m about to say. As a person who watches hundreds of films a year, if we stick to the various directors who have been idolized by the world for decades, such as Ford or Hawks, the so-called canon, watching a good film is a regular thing and for those who watch a lot of films, a daily thing. Sometimes, in rare moments, we see a movie that we might expect to be good but ends up being an experience closer to the divine. If you rolled your eyes at the word divine, I understand, but sometimes you see a movie that speaks to you so much that you know you’ll never forget it, and divine is honestly appropriate. Something that takes you out of your body a little, that makes you feel that all those hours making lists on Letterboxd were worth it and that no one can love cinema as much as you do. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Steppenwolf was that film for me, a tremendous film, notoriously inspired by the canon with an enormous burst of beauty and brutality. Steppenwolf is a rare film and such films are seen in the cinema, in the dark, but above all with an open heart. (Rui Mendes)
