‘Silent City Driver’: Tallinn Review

Dir: Sengedorj Janchivdorj. Mongolia. 2024. 137mins

An alienated, damaged man drives around the night-time thoroughfares of a city that rejects him; his disgust with the corruption that stains the streets prompts him to seek revenge. While the premise of Mongolian director Sengedorj Janchivdorj’s brooding drama sounds similar to that of Taxi Driver, this atmospheric, slow-burning story of a disenfranchised hearse-driver who finds it easier to bond with dogs than people is quietly compelling and wholly distinctive. The result is a deliberately paced character study that gradually peels back the layers to reveal Ulaanbaatar’s bleak and unwelcoming underbelly.

Quietly compelling and wholly distinctive

The latest film from prolific Mongolian film, television and theatre director Janchivdorj, Silent City Driver follows his 2022 picture The Sales Girl, which enjoyed an extensive festival run, predominantly in Asian cinema-focused events and showcases. With its striking and sordidly beautiful visuals, plus a strong central performance from Tuvshinbayar Amartuvshin as the mysterious and solitary Myagmar, Silent City Driver should at least match The Sales Girl’s festival reach following its premiere in Tallinn, where it won the top prize in the main competition and a nod for best production design.

The film’s design is deservedly highlighted. Shot in widescreen, with expressive (if minimal) use of colour, the picture condenses a whole sorry back story into a panning shot around Myagmar’s wretched home. An enthusiastic pack of ragged-looking dogs greets Myagmar – a rough head and tail count puts Myagmar’s pet tally well into double figures. He hacks up chunks of slimy meat for the animals as the camera fastidiously floats around the room, taking in a shrine to a long-dead mother, framed by black mould and resignation, and mildewed walls that look as clammy and cold as a cadaver.

It takes a while before we learn the truth about 32-year-old Myagmar’s life up until this point – he spent 12 years in prison for a murder, a sentence that broke both his mind and his body – but the brief moments we spend in his unsavoury room tell us that this is a man who has pretty much given up on human company. 

This begins to change when Myagmar starts his new job as a hearse-driver. Janchivdorj’s use of rhythms and visual repetition suggests a character who prefers his days to lack surprises. When he finds himself sharing the hearse with a fresh faced 18-year-old monk who breaks the ice by sharing his sandwiches, Myagmar’s natural state of stony reserve starts to crack.

A skilled stonemason and carpenter (those years in prison weren’t entirely spent in vain), Myagmar is drawn to the workshop where the bespoke coffins are crafted. There he meets another outsider, a blind carpenter who recognises Myagmar from the fact that he smells of dogs and who compliments him on his “capable hands”. The carpenter has a daughter, Saruul (Narantsetseg Ganbaatar), a young woman who dutifully guides her father home at night on the bus, but who slips out in the evening to work – we assume it is sex work – in the city’s sleazy neon-lit entertainment quarter.

The darkness of this insalubrious night time world is the kind that weighs heavily, that has the choking, smothering quality of smoke. And Myagmar lurks in it, puffing endless cigarettes, effectively stalking the unwitting Saruul. It’s not the most promising start to a friendship, but it does mean that Myagmar is there when Saruul, beaten by a blackmailing hotel owner, needs help. A tentative friendship develops, but Saruul’s sadness and despair is not something that Myagmar’s awkward adoration can fix.

This is a visually striking picture, but just as effective as the cinematography is the use of music – a Serge Gainsbourg song is a repeated motif – and, particularly, sound.