An old woman and healer known as “Scarecrow” (Pugalo) lives in a remote village in Sakha (Yakutia). While shunned and often abused due to her strange behavior, she is regularly called upon by the villagers for her healing powers. Neighbor after neighbor comes to her in moments of crisis—a mother dying from an accidental gunshot wound to the stomach, a middle-aged couple struggling with impotence, a family hoping to resuscitate a daughter from a two-year coma. While insisting she will no longer lend her healing powers to future visitors, each time she finds herself incapable of refusing the sick who come to her. Living in drunken squalor, with sheets covering the windows, a dead mouse on the floor, and dried up pelmeni strewn across her kitchen, Pugalo seems to occupy another plane of existence.
The third feature film of Yakut-Russian director Dmitrii Davydov, Pugalo thrust its director into the relative limelight when the film dominated the awards at the 2020 Kinotavr Film Festival, winning the Grand Prix, Critics Guild Award, and Best Actress. Indeed the film culminated a vigorous new interest in Sakha cinema in recent years, highlighted by accolades at several international film festivals. Davydov's debut feature film Bonfire (2016) was the first major international breakthrough for Sakha cinema, winning the ImagineNATIVE award in Toronto, among others. With austere settings in the frozen taiga, elemental human dramas sometimes compared to Greek tragedy, the films of Davydov are a breath of fresh air in the realm of contemporary Russian cinema. The recent boom in Sakha cinema has resulted in a special issue of Iskusstvo Kino in 2021, and even the recent moniker of “Sakhawood.” The breakout success of recent Sakha filmmakers parallels that of filmmakers from the Ural region, such as Kantemir Balagov (Closeness, 2017; Beanpole, 2019) and Kira Kovalenko (Unclenching the Fist, 2021) which took home prizes at Cannes, among other festivals. Parenthetically, one wonders whether the resonance of Pugalo and the cinema of the Russian regions in part reflect a crisis in Russian cinema of the metropole.
Pugalo, the old woman, lives outside of human society. We see her weeping alone in a birch forest, chopping and hauling wood across the frozen taiga with an aerial view (a truly Sisyphean spectacle), dancing in a drunken trance in her cluttered apartment, and staring down evil spirits in the corner of her room. Pugalo is in part a continuation of the Tengist (animist-shamanist) traditions of Sakha culture, in part a new iteration of the holy fool figure in the Russian literary and cinematic traditions, following those of Andrei Tarkovskii's films and Pavel Lungin's The Island (2006). With its minimalist exposition, Pugalo leaves viewers in the dark about the circumstances that led to the woman's present life and the motives behind her selfless acts of healing. This elliptical narrative style works in the film's favor, drawing viewers in and building suspense before the ultimately more conventional grand reveal at the conclusion.
On the one hand, it is all too easy to argue that the film capitalizes on cultural mythologies of Yakut exoticism and mysticism, targeting the postcolonial imaginary of its external audience (including the judges of Kinotavr). On the other, the film can just as well be seen—as it has been by its admirers and champions—as giving voice to hitherto underrepresented Sakha cinema. If one prefers to leave such arguments aside, one can simply enjoy Pugalo on the level of cinema: the story world of the film—its characters, textures, and landscapes—is truly engrossing.
