Director Aktan Arym Kubat casts himself in the title role of The Light Thief (2010), an electrician nicknamed Svet-Ake (‘Mr Light’). Svet-Ake feels it his duty to ensure that all of his neighbours in his village in Kyrgyzstan have access to electric lighting. He helps those too poor to afford electricity by fiddling with their meters, and thus steals light for them. In his spare time, Svet-Ake experiments with wind power, and dreams of setting up giant turbines at the mouth of the local river in order to supply the whole village with affordable energy.

 

Bekzat (Taalaikan Abazova), a former villager who made his fortune in the city, is the only one who seems to take Svet-Ake’s wind turbine plan seriously. If Svet-Ake agrees to work for him, Bekzat promises to make his plan a reality. The businessman has returned to the village with a plan of his own: to buy up public land and make it profitable. However, the mayor of the village questions Bekzat’s motives, and urges the villagers not to trust him

 

Although The Light Thief has a clear direction to its narrative, it adopts a relaxed momentum which effectively translates the gentle pace of life in the village. There is time to observe Svet-Ake’s daughters playing together or tucked up in bed; to witness moments of intimacy, banter and tension between Svet-Ake and his wife; to linger over the expressive faces of the old villagers.

 

In spite of its leisured pace and focus on village life, the film never becomes dull, as each shot is perfectly timed. The film opens with Svet-Ake working on his wind turbine, a shot which lasts just long enough to establish a sense of place and for Svet-Ake to adjust the turbine’s blade. The Light Thief also encompasses far more material than a simple synopsis would suggest. It is punctuated by detours unrelated to the main narrative, which reflect the diversity of the villagers’ concerns or provide comic relief. For example, Svet-Ake must comfort his best friend when he receives a demand for divorce from his wife who has moved to Italy with another man. His friend is less helpful when they are both drunk and Svet-Ake pours out his sorrow at having no son: he recommends that Svet-Ake drive out the female hormones clearly rampant in his body through the simple but efficient means of a strong electric shock.

 

The film’s attempts at allegory sit awkwardly with the film’s dominant mode of realism. Svet-Ake’s involvement with Bekzat is book-ended by two shots which only make sense interpreted symbolically. When Svet-Ake returns from his first meeting with Bekzat, his optimism is oddly translated by a haunting shot of donkeys roaming freely in the road. Later, when Svet-Ake has realized that Bekzat is a crass opportunist, an image of the donkeys copulating seems to translate his disillusionment. More serious is the jarring effect of the film’s ending: as Bekzat’s men attempt to take him by force to a meeting with their boss, Svet-Ake is accidentally drowned in the river. Svet-Ake’s unintentional death points to the impending destruction of village’s way of life as a side-effect of Bekzat’s plans. Although the entire film has been building up to such a fate for the village, alluding to it through the unceremonious and needless death of the protagonist clashes with the gentle and playful atmosphere of the rest of the film.