‘Travesty’: Busan Review

Dir: Baatar Batsukh. Mongolia. 2024. 78mins

In a small Mongolian backwater, a giant metropolis police captain is drafted in to navigate a hostage scenario on the native hospital, solely to seek out himself blocked at each flip by uncooperative locals and indifference from his higher-ups. Baatar Batsukh’s second movie strikes away from the overt horror of his debut Aberrance to concentrate on the real-life nightmare of dwelling in a spot dominated by an uncaring, corrupt state. After a brisk first half, this social messaging begins to weigh the movie down, though it’s buoyed considerably by Batsukh’s eager eye for visuals and the darkish comedy woven all through.

Hanging visuals

As with Aberrance, which performed at SXSW and had a restricted US launch in 2022, Travesty’s punchy title hints on the movie’s thematic spine. Premiering at Busan, the movie’s hostage narrative will probably be acquainted to a wider viewers and, whereas the sociopolitical points are particularly Mongolian, the concept of a repressed particular person taking issues into his personal arms strikes a common chord, and will assist the movie to journey. Nearer to residence, the presence within the forged of standard Mongolian pop star Daviadasha (actual title Ganbold Ariunbold) ought to assist its prospects.

One in all Travesty’s key promoting factors is its putting visuals — Batsukh can be a cinematographer who lensed each this, Aberrance and different works together with Erdenebileg Ganbold’s The Steed. The motion right here takes place in a nondescript Mongolian outback city (which, in response to a rusting outdated signal, could also be referred to as Travesty) painted in muted yellows and dusty browns; a low-key palette in opposition to which gleaming black metropolis police vans look like alien invaders.

In a leather-based jacket and denims, police captain Davaa (Ariunbyamba Sukhee) initially approaches the scenario with one thing of a swagger. Instructed {that a} gunman has taken the city’s solely physician and 19 others hostage within the metropolis hospital, Davaa is satisfied that he can convey the scenario shortly to an finish. The massive metropolis cop within the provincial city is a well-used trope, and Sukhee performs it successfully, his gruff, world-weary manner and informal angle suggesting that his superior authority can outwit these outback hicks.

When the gunman kill his first sufferer and says that he’ll assassinate one individual per hour till his ransom calls for are met, Davaa realises he may have some assist. The 2 native cops are clearly out of their depth so he calls his bosses, solely to find that they’re reluctant to become involved, their concern about cash and repute outranking the “redneck” human lives at stake. As time ticks on — actually, the police station clock being a relentless, apparent presence on the soundtrack — Davaa should try to determine precisely who he’s up in opposition to, and why.

The reply to that is available in a muddy second half that swaps preliminary tension-building for a extra overtly political strategy, as Davaa comes to know that the determined motivations of the unnamed younger gunman (Ganbold) align together with his personal private emotions about his nation. Capturing in widescreen with blurring on the edges, Batsukh successfully utilises reflections, excessive angles and reverse pictures to additionally blur the psychological line between captain and legal.

Because the police station fills up with a Greek refrain of native criminals and, for some unidentified purpose, a girl in labour, a component of farce begins to lap across the edges. But, elsewhere, the screenplay, by Erdene Orosoo, turns into more and more pointed. “One man’s screams won’t repair this social travesty,” laments Davaa. Chapter headings — ‘The City’, ’The Metropolis’, ‘The Nation, ’The State’ — recommend that the rot has set in on a nationwide scale, and the mournful undercurrent of Bayarkhuu Nyamkhuu’s sinister soundtrack takes maintain because the movie reaches its bloody conclusions. By this level, even earlier than a coda involving a flashback and a message written in bullet mud, Travesty has begun to buckle beneath its personal righteous fury.