Director: Yerden Telemissov
Writers: Sergey Litovchenko, Yerden Telemissov
Stars: Irka Abdulmanova, Zangar Akhmet-kazy, Dulyga Akmolda
Synopsis: As the district administration prepares for the arrival of high-ranking officials, local alcoholic Sadyk Ospanovich takes on problems of intergalactic proportions. Two large-scale events collide, leading to inevitable conflict. Caught in the middle are Nadya, a weary shopkeeper, and Baur, a naive police officer.
Yerden Telemissov’s feature directorial debut, Stinker (Sasyq), starts out incredibly strong. It stages a series of events where an old man attempts to kill himself, unsuccessfully so, and even deliberately trolls the audience in its opening scene after his first attempt by immediately cutting to the end credits. This moment received a rapturous reaction from the Fantasia International Film Festival crowd, where the film had its North American premiere and is currently competing for the Cheval Noir award.
The rest of the movie balances between the same absurd sense of humor in its opening scene, but it also opens itself up to be a profoundly human tale of second chances, where its titular character, Sadyq (Bakhytzhan Alpeis), known as ‘Stinker,’ learns how to live again after he finds an alien (Chingiz Kapin) who crash-lands in his neighborhood. Sadyq has been stuck in a depressive rut ever since his wife passed away, and has been looking for various ways to join her. None of his attempts have worked, which already primes the audience that his time on this planet is not finished yet.
Of course, moments where Sadyq attempts to hide and help the alien are highly reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial, and Telemissov doesn’t hide its primary inspiration, from visual references that harken back to the joys of watching one of the most groundbreaking motion pictures ever made to story beats that are plucked straight out of it. The alien wants to return home, so Sadyq, and eventually, shopkeeper Nadya (Irka Abdulmanova) and her granddaughter (Ailin Sultangazina) help them out. There’s even a bike sequence, though this time it’s a motorized bike, and they’re not being chased by anyone. And the bike doesn’t float in the air and reach the moon. Still, one can tell Telemissov holds great reverence for the picture because without it, the chances of this film existing are highly unlikely.
Where Stinker differentiates itself from Spielberg’s classic is in its contemporary political dimension, by paralleling Sadyq’s tale of redemption with a despotic mayor (Dulyga Akmolda) hellbent on getting rid of the poorest people of his town to stage a motorcade in his image. He enlists a bumbling, flat-earther police officer (Zangar Akhmet-kazy) to rid himself of Sadyq and the people in his way, until he learns the inextricable truth about planet Earth, and his way of thinking begins to change.
The political satire itself is well-introduced, but sadly goes nowhere as Telemissov attempts to tie up all loose plot threads by the time Stinker reaches its gross-out climax. That said, the metaphor at the end is heard loud and clear, and the messaging itself is a lot more cogent than you think. I do wish some more exploration was given on the police officer, whose beliefs are built by the YouTube videos he watches until they’re shattered when he encounters the alien, who humorously shows him how round the Earth actually is. He then disappears from a good chunk of the movie, even though his demeanor has clearly shifted, and an object of his plays a critical role in helping our characters find the alien’s home.
That said, it’s not hard for Telemissov to warm your heart by the human story at the center of Stinker’s more kooky, sci-fi driven elements. The relationship between Sadyq and the alien is a lot more psychologically riveting than I envisioned, and how each human protagonist complete each other, in a way, and discover a newfound purpose in their lives they didn’t think possible before the alien united them together and formed bonds that are now inseparable. There’s an incredible sincerity to how Alpeis portrays Sadyq that makes it easy for the audience to warm up to him, even if he may often be eccentric and possess interpersonal skills that may not be on the conventional side. His alchemy with his other co-stars is note-perfect, and we ultimately want them to learn how to live again, no matter the obstacles life will inevitably throw them along the way.
Because of this, it won’t take long for you to leave Stinker in a puddle of tears, feeling equally renewed as the protagonists. It may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s definitely a good time at the movies, especially with the receptive Fantasia crowd who laughed when they needed the most, and cried when the movie gave them permission to do so. It is the definition of a festival crowd-pleaser, and is not to be missed if it hits your neck of the woods, hopefully sooner than later.
