Lost in Karastan

Ben Hop­kins is a fun­ny one. He’s been qui­et­ly knock­ing togeth­er movies since the late ​’90s, danc­ing in his own eccen­tric cir­cle and elud­ing any­thing that might be described as main­stream suc­cess. But his films are great – joc­u­lar and lyri­cal trea­tis­es on glob­alised economies and cultures.

Even though this mad­cap lat­est, Lost in Karas­tan, feels like his largest scale project to date, there is lit­tle dis­cernible attempt to make that con­nec­tion to a big, broad audi­ence. The pos­si­bly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film allows us into the loopy world of Euro­pean film fes­ti­vals, as the fic­tion­al back­wa­ter of Karas­tan announces one of their own and pro­grammes a ret­ro­spec­tive of work by pompous British short film direc­tor Emil Forester (Matthew Macfadyen).

When he arrives at the air­port and has to hand over a cash bribe before he’s even offi­cial­ly entered the coun­try, the lay of the land has been set. For the remain­der of the film he pings around like a gorm­less shill, even­tu­al­ly agree­ing to make a film for the extreme­ly cor­rupt but charis­mat­ic Pres­i­dent Abashiliev (Richard van Wey­den) which will star hack bar­bar­ian actor, Xan But­ler (Noah Taylor).

Hop­kins mocks the country’s freeform bureau­cra­cy while just about
keep­ing the fun­ny for­eign­er jokes in check. The film’s total lack of for­mal finesse is per­haps fit­ting of its ram­shackle sub­ject, though it’s occa­sion­al­ly a lit­tle too loose for its own good. That you have to ques­tion whether Hop­kins intends this shod­di­ness to be iron­ic is not good. It recalls Woody Allen’s Star­dust Mem­o­ries in the way it mocks the para­dox­i­cal pre­ten­sions of a film direc­tor, who is on one hand arch­ly dis­mis­sive of philistines, but on the oth­er would be hap­py to impart his wis­dom if the price is right.

Hop­kins also has a pop at gen­tile Brits out of their cul­tur­al depth, unwill­ing to immerse them­selves in new com­mu­ni­ties and always think­ing about whether there’s some­one back home avail­able to feed the dog.