The Light Thief - review

Man on wire: Aktan Arym Kubat, director and star of The Light Thief
10 April 2012

Films from cinematic outposts such as Kyrgyzstan tend to be praised just because they appear at all and are full of nicely gnarled peasant faces, but Aktan Arym Kubat's The Light Thief is too good for such patronising behaviour.

It's about a rural society being systematically corrupted and a village electrician (the director himself) who fights against it all.

He lives in a small village, where he's obsessed with constructing a wind machine that will produce the electricity the last few inhabitants need.

He'll break the law if he has to, by rigging up a pensioner's electricity meter so he doesn't have to pay. He is, in short, an admirable man with an open heart and a pawky sense of humour. You only have to look at his face to smile.

The urban leeches, however, are all around him, and it is a thousand to one against him succeeding to bring light into darkness. Meanwhile, the film, though essentially angry at the electrician's fate, has both unforced charm and gentle humour.

Watch the scene where his wife bathes him to see what I mean. It's two minutes that express everything.

Cinematographer Hassan Kydyraliyev has done a good job, but the film - Kubat's sixth - belongs securely to this cherishable director and actor.

The Light Thief (Svet-Ake)
Cert: 15

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