I have read

... nothing ...

Vertical Divider

I have written

... nothing ...

an eagle and an initiatic journey

Vertical Divider

What comes to me from Kazakhstan usually has to do with falconry. So does the Eagle Hunter's Son, a movie directed by René Bo Hansen (2009). I suppose it offers to any viewer a first meaningful insight into the culture of Kazakhstan, a country on which we usually have little or no information. Against lonely landscapes of sublime beauty, the millennial conundrums are depicted: those of the two sons of the nomad, equally dissatisfied with the traditional role distribution. Nomadic lifestyles are only possible if demographic density remains very low; this is why only the younger son is allowed to continue with the herd, while the older is to migrate to the city in search of work. Apparently brilliant destiny, especially if we only know it from a photograph he sends home; the reality of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan may be quite gruesome, and not only for the spectral aspect of half-finished blocks of flats falling slowly into ruin; enough to say that the older brother is to work in a mine, under the conditions that are largely left to the viewer's imagination.
What we actually see on the movie is the story of the younger son, Bazarbai, along his way in search of the missing brother. Guided, as it could not be otherwise, by the family's tame eagle. He is to encounter many things during this initiation journey: bad people who catch birds of prey for sale, and who do not hesitate to enslave a girl as well. One of the aspects of growing up in a closed traditional community is that one can actually ignore what the real evil is; Bazarbai is yet to discover the abuse of both, non-human and human animals. On the other hand, there is also the richness and diversity of the country's heritage that he confronts, as the escaped couple (Bazarbai and the slave girl) come to a Buddhist monastery for help. 
The eagle saves lives on more than one occasion. Against wolves, which is easy enough to comprehend. But in the end, the eagle helps to find the missing brother - after an accident in the mine. Such a happy ending may be seen as a fruit of some extravagant imagination. Yet eagles collaborate with human hunters precisely for a very similar kind of task. They are to catch the prey flushed out of a burrow by the human partner. And what a mine really is, if not a large burrow? Spotting men busying themselves at one entrance of it, the eagle patiently waits at another one. Indicating the access to forgotten, disused mine shaft, the bird enables the rescue of the miners. 

At a falconry festival in Abu Dhabi, 2014.