To Get to Heaven First, You Have to Die

Overview:

Twenty-year-old Kamal has been married for a few months but his wife is still a virgin. Learning that there is nothing physically wrong with him after visiting a doctor, Kamal sets off to town to search for another woman. The city is full of them but Kamal is still unable to meet anyone, until a chance encounter on a bus. But it looks as if this accidental meeting will take Kamal much farther than he was prepared to go… By the director of ‘Angel on the Right’. —Celluloid Dreams

Director:

Jamshed Usmonov

Status:

Released

Language:

Tajik

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

infidelity
organized crime
loveless marriage
unconsummated marriage

Cast

Khurshed Golibekov

~ as ~

Kamal

Dinara Drukarova

~ as ~

Vera

Maruf Pulodzoda

~ as ~

Vera's husband

Djonibek Mourodov

~ as ~

Said Shah

Shakhnosa Khodjaeva

~ as ~

Amie Said Shah

Davron Alimatov

~ as ~

Fatkhullo Abdulloev

~ as ~

Natalia Fedotova

~ as ~

Khairi Burieva

~ as ~

Munisa Ganieva

~ as ~

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

C
CRCulver
Written 6 year(s) ago
4
To Get to Heaven... (2006) is a film by Jamshed Usmonov set in the director's native Tajikistan. Kamal (Khurshed Golibekov) is a young man who has recently married, but he suffers from impotence and has been unable to consummate his marriage. After three months, he visits a doctor and then undertakes to learn the art of love from some older woman in the capital. The first half of the film has him stalking various women around Dushanbe. This odyssey in an American film would probably have been portrayed in a goofy underdog fashion, but Kamal's attempts are creepy, though we do feel his pain.

About halfway through the film, Kamal ends up sleeping with the wife (Dinara Drukarova) of a thug (Maruf Pulodzoda). This lowlife finds out, he doesn't mind as he had been separated from his wife for some time anyway, and takes Kamal under his wing as they burgle their way around town. After witnessing the full extent of his partner's brutality, Kamal turns on him in a bloody fashion, which happens to cure his sexual dysfunction.

All in all, I can't recommend To Get to Heaven to general audiences. This isn't the first film I've seen by a young director that begins in one way and then transitions too suddenly into mobsters and violence. Yes, I get the Oedipal allusions and the probing of the male psyche, but the plot arc chosen for this study just screams "immature scriptwriter". The cinematography is also unimaginative.

I could compliment only two aspects, which will probably only interest a rather niche audience. I was bound for Tajikistan in less than a week as I watched this, and there are few internationally available films from the country, so I guess To Get to Heaven was useful as a glimpse of Tajikistan. The acting by Drukarova and Pulodzoda was competent, and perhaps the same could be said for Golibekov if the character he portrays weren't too cringingly awkward to really appreciate.