Paul Simon would likely describe Arsin (Yesl Jahseleh), the young Kazakh boy at the center of Jing Yi’s feature debut “The Botanist,” as the only living boy in Xinjiang. Lonely and introspective, Arsin spends most of his time wandering around his remote village amongst its flora. When he’s not collecting plant samples for his personal collection, he looks after his grandmother and helps his disgraced older brother (Jalen Nurdaolet) herd sheep in the hills. Most of the time, however, Arsin lives in a rich interior world where his deep connection to nature and memories of departed family, especially his beloved missing uncle, are inextricably bound.
“The Botanist” embraces nomadic Kazakh beliefs about dead souls continuing to live within the natural world, one of the film’s many liminalities. Arsin’s frequent bouts of sleepwalking keep him in a perpetual dreamlike state. He and his family live in a border village within an autonomous region of China; people regularly travel back and forth to neighboring countries, like Kazakhstan, as well as other Chinese provinces. The village itself is stuck in a tenuous space between its rural roots and the modern world. Arsin’s older brother’s cell phone feels like a minor technological disruption when juxtaposed against the placid surroundings, but ominous radio transmissions that hint towards natural gas extraction coming to the region prophesies irreparable change.
Jing situates “The Botanist” in a woozy allegorical context where people and plants are indistinguishable from one another. Arsin not only feels connected to his family in nature, but he also likens Meiyu (Ren Zihan), a local Chinese girl whom he befriends, to a rare plant as well. Visually speaking, Jing takes an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to collapsing the film’s human characters and its vast landscape into a single fluid entity. Sometimes he not-so-subtly suggests it with shots of Arsin tenderly running his hands through a flowing river. Other times, he deploys surreal folkloric imagery, like when Arsin speaks to his lost uncle in the form of a talking horse, which can’t help but recall television’s famed Mister Ed.
An impassioned sincerity courses through “The Botanist” that’s as much a feature as it is a liability. Jing and cinematographer Vanon Li might rely on the occasional derivative shot, but they still have an obvious capacity for crafting strong images. They mostly manage to imbue Xinjiang’s vibrant plant life with the necessary visual awe, but they also bring that same generous eye to the rest of village, especially its serene, sparse tracts of land. (A wide shot of two sheep herds colliding in a desert basin casually stuns with its docu-style simplicity.) Recurring slow pans across a forest may risk repetition, but Jing and Vanon break up the rhythm with welcome intrusions, like intimate handheld depictions of children at play and an ethereal close-up shot of a finger swiping through photos on a phone.
Jing’s facility with young, non-professional actors also helps draws out an understated performance from Yesl, who rises to the challenge of commanding the frame through limited actions like walking and staring pensively. But while Yesl and Ren exhibit believable chemistry, and both are capable of projecting melancholy at key moments, Arsin and Meiyu’s romantically-charged friendship feels too thin to make up the film’s (admittedly loose) narrative backbone. Oblique glances shared between two people can only communicate so much, or so little, before they become a creative crutch.
Moreover, Jing evades the fact of Arsin and Meiyu’s different ethnicities — Kazakh vs. Han Chinese — by filtering their relationship through a vaguely defined botanical metaphor. (Different floral species can coexist in harmony, or something.) It’s acceptable for “The Botanist” to address political realities through suggestion, but it sometimes seems like the characters’ different cultural backgrounds are hardly a concern at all, which slightly negates the supposed unlikelihood of their connection.
An insistently weighty voiceover recurs throughout “The Botanist,” delivering both exposition and expressions of yearning from Arsin’s perspective. Not only does the clumsy narration feature the film’s weakest writing, but it also lays bare some shallow thematic concepts. “The Botanist” would not be the first film to contend that love and spiritual connection can withstand transformation or transcend time, but it takes more than an earnest presentation to ensure those ideas don’t seem trite, even when they’re delivered from the voice of a child.
As much as “The Botanist” chronicles Arsin’s internal coming of age, it’s his older brother that occasionally feels like the richer subject. Having fled the big city in the aftermath of a violent incident, he now spends his free time calling an old girlfriend and getting drunk while generally neglecting his shepherding duties. A quintessential Chinese young adult, the brother feels disconnected from the stillness of rural life and the speed of the city, yet he still keeps a foot in both worlds just to have options. Arsin initially sympathizes with his brother’s existential struggle from afar, but when he abruptly decides to return to the city, the young boy seems to suddenly understands his aimlessness.
It’s a testament to Jing’s confidence as a young filmmaker that he essentially sidelines an emotionally potent narrative strand in favor of personal exploration. Jing was born and raised in Xinjiang and he clearly imbues “The Botanist” with his own past. (Both Yesl and Ren are also from Xinjiang, which contributes to the film’s general lived-in feeling.) His connection to the region certainly informs the trancelike ecological imagery that underpins Arsin’s psycho-spiritual journey. Humanity’s tender, fraught relationship with the natural world has a storied history on film, but in “The Botanist,” it can sometimes feel like an unearned shortcut to grazing the sublime.
Grade: B-
“The Botanist” premiered at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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