elsinefilo Reviews

Motherland (2015)

Senem Tüzen's thought-provoking take on religious neighborhood pressure in modern-day Turkey.

[4 February 2017]

Senem Tüzen's directorial debut 'Motherland' tells the story of Nesrin, a young woman recently divorced from her actor husband. Nesrin (Esra Bezen Bilgin) returns to her hometown to finish up a novel she has been working on. She probably wants to be tuned in to her inner world at a time when she feels that her muse has deserted her. However, when her mother turns up at home against her daughter's wishes, she feels that inspiration is not the only thing that is leaving her. The story is set in a city called Nigde, which is a parochial town and one of the bastions of religious nationalism in Central Anatolia. Through the escalating tension between the mother and daughter in their everyday lives, Senem Tüzen seeks to capture the ambiance in which individuals are forced to conform to religious-conservative norms in every part of their lives. Nesrin is a divorced woman so she is not expected to live alone in a place she was born and bred. The fact that she often takes a walk on her own in her hometown is frowned upon by her mother's friends and neighbors. Her mother even gives her a scolding because she comes home after dark. Neighborhood Islamic pressure had always been a central source of deep anxiety for the secular in Turkey but liberals had often accused them of being overbearing and pompous. With the permeation of political Islam into the ideological state apparatus in the past fifteen years, we now know that the conservative people who was once labeled as 'victims' of secularism and Kemalism don't really care about the concept of living together or respecting others' space with their skin-deep internalized values and beliefs. I believe Senem Tüzen's film-making is a nice effort to show people that the driving force to make others conform to this close-knit but narrow-minded values does actually come from the grassroots, not necessarily just the state apparatus. Some of the things in the film, however, do not fit the bill. Nesrin's mother is a retired teacher but she is just like any other narrow-minded villager despite her education. With her untimely antics, she somehow turns into a cardboard character. She sort of loses the credibility. Just like any other art-house film-maker winking at festivals , Senem Tüzen makes use of different lights, various camera angles and several corners of the house like the gate and the writing room to make us feel that Nesrin does not feel free. She even feels suffocated. Tüzen can use all the symbols, all the camera angles or she can get personal with the camera any way she likes but when she finalizes her movie with a gratuitous sex-scene, well that sure feels more than a 'style over substance' moment and leaves you with ambiguous feelings that this movie could have been so much better.

Yeni Dünya (2015)

Those who have seen MAR will be bitterly disappointed. Those who haven't will mistake this for a debut!

[16 March 2015]

With his directorial debut 'Mar' (Snake), Caner Erzincan made an auspicious start in his career. Mar, which recounts the story of a single father who is trying to survive with his two children, was like a breath of fresh air in the stifling atmosphere of Turkish first films which had been imitating the minimalist style of N.B. Ceylan and Zeki Demikubuz. In spite of the fact that Mar was a brilliant film, it had a limited screening in local theaters and unfortunately it was seen by so few people. Most people probably had the chance to get to know this film either through pirate copies on the Internet or by buying the DVD. Yeni Dünya (New World), just like Mar, is getting a limited screening in local theaters.However,Yeni Dünya will probably be seen by more people than the number of people who saw Mar in theaters but I guess many people who adored the first film of Mr. Erzincan won't find the same artistic value in Yeni Dünya. Yeni Dünya tells the story of a rural family's troublesome migration from the countryside to the city. A father, a mother and a kid with a Down syndrome sets out on a long road to Istanbul. The couple wants better education opportunities for their kid and they also need the nursing money provided by the government. The question then arises, Why Istanbul? If the parents want a better education for their kid, could they not look for those facilities in a closer city? If they needed the money so badly, couldn't they deal with the bureaucratic red tape in their hometown? The director Caner Erzincan chose to cast his own brother Soner as the boy who has the Down syndrome in the film. I think it takes guts to use someone who really has the Down syndrome. For that matter, Soner seems to be only one who is pushing this movie ahead but Soner looks too old to be someone of 14. In an interview with the director, I read that Soner is actually 25! Caner Erzincan wants to show the audience how transforming cities take its toll on the peace of its dwellers. The movie was shot in Fikirtepe, one of the urban transformation centers in Istanbul. As small buildings are being demolished and superseded by obsessively massive projects, the city's close-knit traditional neighborhoods and shared public spaces are torn apart by a supposedly lively urban culture. Mr. Erzincan's bird's eye view camera work clearly tries to show that difference. Maybe those video pictures will help future generations see this juxtaposition of crude reality and lyrical pulchritude. Alas,while Caner Erzincan tries to tell the story of poor people who are relocated to high rise buildings on the outskirts of Istanbul, he chooses to tell about this transformation through stereotypical characters that classy Turkish films stopped using years ago. Here,we have a woman who's being transformed faster than urban renewal centers. At one point, the mother (Şükran Ovalı) seems bewildered because she's been stripped of her village. The man who is supposed to help the family turns out to be someone 'dirty'. He has to exploit the woman he's supposed to help. After the mother gets sexually abused, she's in shock. She can't say anything to her husband, she is absolutely helpless in a patriarchal society then we see her cheating on her husband without actually understanding how the heck she became like that. Some of the recent Turkish film makers in Turkish cinema tend to put lots of social issues together in just one film. They seem to talk about everything in one simple film. Mr. Erzincan avoided that in his directorial debut but in Yeni Dünya he seems to have put everything in a can. Repressed sex drives in a patriarchal society, low-income neighborhoods razed to make way for higher-end housing and superficial human relations, bureaucratic red tape in a country which is obsessed with urban development, the education of disadvantaged of people seem to have been put in the same can in one and half hours.

The film-makers aim to donate some part of the revenue to the Down Syndrome Foundation in Istanbul. This noble stance alongside with Soner's acting is probably the best thing about this film. Without high hopes, without comparing it to Mar you might like this film. I've seen it to support an independent film. I hope Caner Erzincan's third film will remind us of MAR more than Yeni Dünya.

Bizum Hoca (2014)

A hilarious,albeit a predictable, film about a witty imam and his conservationist congregation

[5 March 2015]

Bizum Hoca (Our Hodja) tells the story of Balck Sea villagers fighting against the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the region. The temporary local imam, who is the leading character in the film, is probably based on a legendary imam who comes from the region. According to local lore, this guy is still known as 'the hodja from Of' (a district of Trabzon) and his sermons were said to be unpredictably witty and satirical as well as eloquent.In the film, the hodja from Of is not actually on the permanent staff. The locals need him because he's the only one who can help them sort out their petty differences—well at least until the government sends an official imam to the local mosque.One day,when the villagers notice earthmovers working by the very creek which gives live to their village, it's the quick-witted imam's duty to impress his congregation upon the cons of those plants. In today's Turkey, which has been governed by 'supposedly liberal' Islamists for more than ten years now, not a day goes by that we don't witness a new threat to environment. Turkey's recent obsession with economic growth has been destroying grasslands, coastal areas, marshes and rivers. These economic policies are formulated by a pro-Islamic government who claims that they are the true representatives of a prophet who once said: 'Even if the Day of Judgment unfolds before your eyes, and you have a seedling in your hand, go ahead and plant it…' In that sense, the film Bizum Hoca shows the exact difference between true Islam and the Islam imposed by an authoritarian state. On one hand we have an Imam who hasn't got any formal education. His understanding of religion is all about love of humanity and nature. On the other hand we have an official imam with a formal education whose understanding of religion is all rules-based or ritual-based. For instance, at some point in the film when one of the locals ask the imam 'Are we going to march and demonstrate every day like this? We all turned into communists in the end.' the imam wittily answers 'Is fighting for one's rights only for communists?' At another point in the film when the official imam wants the locals not to pay attention to the local talent show just because he thinks it causes an erosion of morality and humility, Our Hodja says 'in the time of our Prophet, there used to be nice entertainments organized.I mean Islam doesn't mean a grumpy face, you've got to laugh. Smiling is the charity of human face, isn't it my dear?' Some people may claim that the film's theme is a serious one and it should not be played down in such a light hearted comedy. I say, let's not forget that comedy is the only genre which gets highest chance of success at the box office in this country. It may be light hearted but it is certainly not a bad comedy. We should bear in mind that imams in Turkish movies have been mostly stereotypical, cardboard characters until recently. We need more unconventional men of religion on silver screen. (see also Onur Unlu's Itirazim Var) Bizum Hoca has a funny yet thought provoking story. It has a truly stellar cast. With better prepared subtitles on DVD even a foreigner would have enjoyed this film. Having said that, I wish they had not commercialized the movie this much. I could not help noticing that some of the sponsors rolling in the credits are actually the sponsors of the government who has backed the sort of companies the film tries to criticize.

Love Me (2013)

I think I've heard this story before.

[28 February 2014]

Sev Beni (Love Me) a Ukrainian-Turkish co-production tells the story of Cemal (Ushan Cakir) and Sasha (Viktoria Spesivtseva). Cemal is about to marry a girl whom his mother chose for him. Given the fact that arranging marriages is the still the common practice in rural Turkey, Cemal's case is hardly surprising. At the henna ceremony (traditionally part of the fertility ritual that take places on the eve of a wedding usually at the bridal home) his friend asks Cemal which football team his fiancée supports but Cemal wonders why he should talk to a girl about football in the first place. He is actually on the brink of marrying somebody whom he has barely talked to. He has probably never had any long term relationships and he is sexually inexperienced. His uncle suggests Cemal should accompany his friends to Ukraine on a business trip. While Cemal is quite reluctant to join the team at first, he gives in to his uncle. For Cemal's uncle and his friends, Ukraine is a place to let off steam with beautiful Slavic Natashas (the prevalence of sex workers from the ex–Soviet Union has earned them a nickname: Natashas in Turkish). Cemal meets Sasha at a strip club in Kiev. Sasha, who is the mistress of a rich man, wants to have a baby so that she can secure her future. Sasha takes him to her place. When Sasha happens to know that her grandmother ran away from the nursery home, they can't fulfill the arrangement and an idiosyncratic series of scenes centered on cultural clashes ensue. The acting in the movie is good enough while the chemistry between Ushan Çakır and Viktoria Spesivtseva would be more compelling without the trappings disguised in a white jeep and fur :) Sev Beni which reminds me of Elveda Katya (starring Anna Andrusenko), Eylül (starring Elena Polyanskaya), I loved you so much (starring Alma Terzic) doesn't actually say anything new. I don't know about the Russian people but Turks must be tired of the Slavic-Turko love stories. In Sev Beni,we see the usual racial stereotypes. All of the Turkish guys except Cemal are just lecherous people who want to have the time of their lives away from their 'ugly' Turkish wives. And, all of the Slavic women seem to be interested in making some easy money by shagging foreign men. What makes Slavic women more sensual to the eyes of Turkish men is not really how they look. They are really uninhibited in both their dress and behavior. On the other hand, what makes Turkish woman emotionally and physically inhibited is the patriarchal society engineered by Turkish men. Turkish men are actually the victims of a system that they've built up themselves. That's why they might sound quite horny, uncouth and inconsiderate to foreign eyes. And the he reasons why Slavic women behave the way they do is more about how they feel their societies perceive them. They simply don't have to be on their best behavior. When everyone has got some sex appeal, the unbearable lightness of sexual rivalry kicks in. In the movie Cemal meets a Turkish doner seller( Yavuz Bingol). He tells Cemal that if Slavic women are honest, they are very honest and if they are bitches, they are real f*cking bitches and he adds he left his wife and kids for the latter kind of a Slavic woman. He says the woman for whom he has risked everything in his life works as a prostitute in Antalya. There could be many Slavic women who are willingly indulge in prostitution but I believe that's not where reality lies. The movie overlooks the fact that the forced prostitution of women through coercion or violence is still a global tragedy and we know that some of these women are duped into working as prostitutes in Turkey. With a smarter plot, a fairer portrayal of sex tourism and fewer platitudes on race Sev Beni could have been a memorable movie. Maybe the only thing which would make it stand out is its finale. The dénouement reminds us real life is not a romantic dramedy.

Yabanci (2012)

"I want him to be buried as a human being not as a revolutionary" could have meant a lot more if Alpgezmen sticked to what she really wanted to tell....

[5 September 2013]

Filiz Alpgezmen's directorial debut 'Stranger' centres around Özgür (Sezin Akbaşoğulları), a French born girl to Turkish parents, who took refuge in France after the Turkish coup d'état in 1980. Özgür apparently lost her mother years ago and her father seems to have brought up his daughter all alone. The 12 September 1980 Turkish coup d'état, headed by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren had been one of the darkest patches in recent Turkish history. Thousands of people were arrested and blacklisted. Hundreds of people were judged on their political views. Many people were tortured to death. A lot of people were removed from citizenship.

Özgür's parents belong to this group of left-wing people who were removed from citizenship. When Özgür's father passes away, he leaves her a letter. All he wants is to be buried in his homeland. For someone who was stripped of his citizenship, that's practically impossible. The technical flaws of this movie starts from the moment when Özgür actually brings her father's body to Istanbul. The movie doesn't really explain how the heck the Turkish authorities accepts the body of someone who was stripped of his citizenship. If they do accept the body of this citizen why is the burial process tied up in bureaucratic red tape? Turks in Europe are known for holding onto their sub-identity even obstinately. Özgür was born and bred in France, so we can understand why she speaks Turkish with a French accent but remember she's the daughter of two supposedly revolutionary Turks. At the beginning of the movie, we hear the father's will in a voice-over. I don't know who did the voice-over but he clearly enunciates the name "Özgür' with a French accent. This doesn't make sense at all. When her father's case leaves Özgür caught in the meshes of heartless Turkish bureaucracy, she contacts her mother's relatives who harboured revolutionaries along with her parents before the coup d'état. I don't think, even a left-wing viewer would feel for Özgür in this loosely connected family life. Özgür has apparently never visited Turkey before. The way that her distant relative Ali on (Serkan Keskin) tells her how his father protected revolutionaries and how he was a tough revolutionary when he was just seven is far from credible. Here Özgür meets Ferhat (Caner Dindoruk) whose interest in her seems to be purely romantic. When Özgür can't cut through the red tape, Ferhat suggests she should go to see the relatives of her father too although her father stopped talking to them years ago. Her father's family seem to be a bunch of devout people. While Alpgezmen's criticizes bureaucratic status quo created by the coup d'état years ago, the fact she presents Özgür's father's relatives in a dim light doesn't really say anything new. Her father's relatives are just cardboard cut-outs. Either Algezmen wants to tell us 'beware their patina of piousness, it's only an act, these people can really enjoy talking about oral sex in a traditional circumcision ceremony ' or she just says 'they are ultimately responsible for the fate of revolutionaries like Özgür's father'. In either case, this is really a narrow-minded perspective. Apart from the soulless, gratuitous sex scene in the movie, the finale clearly shows that the filmmakers are too confused to tell a story. Are you telling the story about a girl who was uprooted from her origins, who has become alienated to herself or are you telling a story about community pressure? It's true that a lot of Turkish citizens feel that their identity, ideology and lifestyle are have been at stake since Erdogan came to power in 2002. Many people feel that he has ulterior motives behind his party's new alcohol regulations but this process (ever-increasing prohibitions and community pressure) could have been told in another movie separately. If the did so,it would not be all 'French' to the real story.

Maybe then, instead of this knee-jerk finale, the movie could have questioned the fact that Kenan Evren, the mastermind behind the 1980 coup is still a free man. Those who were actually engaged in coup d'état in 1980 are enjoying their freedom while those who were alleged to to stage a coup d'état recently have been heavily punished. (If you don't know what I'm talking about check out Gareth Jenkin's report: between fact and fantasy)

Dört Duvar Saraybosna (2012)

An auspicious start to what promises to be a distinguished film-making career...

[28 August 2013]

Nadim Güç's Four Walls Sarajevo has just been released on Youtube. I think the timing is really meaningul with the sabre-rattling by the hawks in USA and pressure from its allies for a tougher stand against Assad regime in Syria. It's a shame that the world has yet to learn that war brings nothing but tears. It's been so long that the USA brought so called democracy to Iraq and yet the violence never stops. Violence, which has become quotidian in the lives of simple Iraqi people has claimed more lives than Saddam had ever done. Four Walls Sarajevo was inspired from a newsreel footage that was shot during the Bosnian war. The footage shows people who are trying to run away from snipers by hiding beneath a ramshackle bus. Those who are show down by the snipers are left behind and the survivor can't really do anything for their friends. The abject helplessness of people, the meaningless of war, the senseless, inter-communal ethnic violence…This is what war brings and this is what Güç's movie portrays excellently…At the beginning of the movie, we see such a young man who checks out a street for snipers with his mirror. He has to go back home to his father. The father has been crippled in a bombardment. His son is the only one he can hold on to now. They live in a small flat in a war-torn building. In the narrow confines of war life, they need to hang on. One day, somebody will start knocking their doors and their life will change forever...The story is quite compelling and the twist in the end really touches you. Senad Alihodzic's performance as Mirza as really great though I can't say the same for the other two actors. I assume Bahri Uka is not really a professional actor since this seems to be his acting debut. The story could actually be more convincing. For instance, Mirza and his father talks about the guy who knocks at the door as if he's miles away though the door is only a meter away. In Mirza's situation that's understandable but his father seems like perfectly sensible guy in spite of the fact he has been locked in that room for more than two years. In spite of its simple flaws, Nadim Güç's movie deserves to be watched at least once. Güç sounds like a promising film-maker. I am looking forward to seeing his next short film," The Journey"

Elveda Katya (2012)

In many ways, Ahmet Sönmez's directorial debut evokes the spirit of Yeşilçam!

[25 August 2013]

Elveda Katya (Farewell Katya) tells the story of Katya, a Georgian girl who has been brought up in an orphanage in Batumi in Georgia. Katya (Anna Andrusenko) learns that her father is a sea captain from the Turkish port of Trabzon. Katya travels there to find out what it's like to have a father. His father who used to be a captain is now called Hadji Yusuf (Kadir İnanır) and he turns out to be a devout member of a deeply conservative society. Katya knows a smattering of Turkish and the old captain Yunus doesn't really know that his fling with a Georgian woman he met in one of the sea ports, actually bore fruit.

The story does actually sound like very much like the Yeşilçam era of the Turkish cinema which always tried to over simply complex social issues by sheer melodrama. Right from the start, we meet our orphan about whose past we briefly learn through a musical score. When the orphan travels to Trabzon, we meet his father right away. She sees him, she accosts him but she doesn't really talk to him. When you do think that you will watch a pure melodrama in which characters do not have rally any interior, psychological depth you meet the father who looks melancholic, desolate, dejected and downhearted. His sombre pensiveness make such a stark contrast to the overall nature of this movie that you just ask yourself as a viewer: 'What's this movie trying to be?" Here you see Kadir İnanır, the accomplished veteran actor of the Turkish cinema who acts as if he was in a minimalist movie which is trying to be an artful, compelling but artistically obscure. I assume nobody told him he was just in a regular romantic flick which wanted attract a mainstream audience.

In the Turkish seaport of Trabzon, local Turkish people assume Katya is another Natasha (the word is used to depict Eastern European prostitutes in Turkey). Anna Andrusenko's performance as Katya brought her the best actress award at 49th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. Her debut acting may look top-notch but she's hardly the long-legged, buxom vamp of the street. To mistake the first blonde girl on the street for a hooker is just nonsensical. You can't criticize societal norms of labelling people easily by creating new preposterous stereotypes.

The story, which is claimed to be based on a true story, is not compelling either. Either they took enough liberties or there are enough discrepancies to make it all sound not so compelling in a really predictable story. We see the main character Katya stranded in Trabzon. In spite of the fact she is rejected by her father over and over again, she doesn't give up on seeking after his father but in the end we find her delivering a trite speech on fatherhood and actually rejecting his fatherhood. I guess the only that makes this movie any different from the clichéd old Turkish movies is that it does not really create a hero out of a repentant father. In spite of all the sentimentality, I don't suppose the audience finds himself/ herself sympathized with the father. If, in his directorial debut, Ahmet Sönmez tried to make an anti-hero out of a father, I am afraid this is not the right genre because his movie looks like collage made from schmaltz, pretentious prime-time TV shows, the papier-mâché façade of art! Those who loved Özcan Alper's "Autumn" will be bitterly disappointed indeed! P.S Veteran actors are known for tackling a vide variety of acccents. Captain Yunus (KADIR INANIR) is actually good at imitating the local dialect at some points. His son and his wife reflect the local dialect of the Black Sea region too but their kids and people around them speak pure Istanbul Turkish, which left me with mixed feelings about the overall acting in this movie.

The Snake (2012)

We desperately need a woman in this house

[12 June 2013]

Caner Erzincan's directorial debut Mar (The Snake) is a stark portrayal of rural life and a vivid insight into the unimaginably poor, helpless and restricted lives. Through the lives of three guys, Mr. Erzincan creates a scathing lampoon of consumer culture and exploitation of labour. Hacı Halil (Yılmaz Şerif) plays an old man who once made his living by smuggling across the Iranian border. Cross-border industry of smuggling fuel and goods is probably the only lucrative business for local Kurds but it's also highly risky because smugglers are sometimes mistaken for terrorists. Hacı lost his leg in his smuggling days. His son Yılmaz (Volga Sorgu Tekinoglu) makes his living by catching snakes sell them for a pittance. The snakes he catches are probably the mainstay of a lucrative pharmaceutical industry but Yılmaz never gets what he really deserves. As much as snake-catching is a decent business, Yılmaz says 'I wish I had a horse, then I would be a smuggler. I would not even get out of my bed for these things 'With the benefit of hindsight, his father retorts 'One dead in a family is one too many.' The little man of the family Güven (Raşit Saraç) , whom everyone calls Gogo collects snails to ease the economic troubles of the family. The children of the village bring their snails to the Çerçi (itinerant seller) to get some plastic pots and pans, dishes, utensils in return. Just as Yılmaz's hard labor is manipulated by the snake buyer, Gogo's hard work is exploited by the Çerçi. Gogo wants to be like Yılmaz catching snakes while Yılmaz wants to engage in smuggling just like once the old man did. The old man, in all his helplessness, tries to keep the family together while he knows exactly what his home lacks; a woman. No local in her right mind would marry a penniless old widower. His last resort is to listen to Dentist Nedim, who is actually a charlatan offering quack cures with his pincers. Nedim is another exploiter. He is there to manipulate people's trust and money.

Hacı's hopeless look for a potential wife sets up sharp contrasts with his son Yılmaz's hopelessly romantic, platonic interest in the town dentist. Gogo lacks a mother, Yılmaz is devoid of somebody he loves, Hacı doesn't have anybody to hold on to in his old age. Gogo, Yılmaz and Hacı are like the sequences from the life of the same guy rendered helpless by circumstances. No matter what their names are, no matter how old they are, no matter what they do there will be always somebody to exploit them Erzincan's story is set in Başkale, which is located in south-eastern Turkey in Van Province on the Iranian border. Because of vague impossibilities the movie was filmed in İçeriçumra, Konya. Mr. Erzincan must have picked this place because he studied in a university located in Konya. The change of location did not damage the soul of the movie. The cinematographic beauty of the film makes you feel like you watch a sequence from a documentary.

The name of the movie 'Mar' comes from Persian and the word is used by Kurdish people but the language of this movie is in Turkish. Mr. Erzincan says his intention was not to draw attention to Turkish-Kurdish conflict. He meant to tell the story of simple people and I guess he wants to say the language of helplessness, the stark reality of exploitation and the dark truth of loneliness is the same all over the world. Caner Erzincan's Mar was a box Office flop. Mr. Erzincan doesn't seem to care about the profit during the theatrical run but independent filmmakers take their cinematic power from loyal cineastes. Mar may have given a very languorous feeling to some of the cinema-goers who don't really appreciate minimalist art. There may not have been enough publicity around this movie. Limited promotion and attracting low ticket sales in limited number of theatres may have turned this into an underrated gem. I don't know how some of our movies are so hyped up while some others are so downgraded. Mar may not the perfect cinematic experience but it doesn't deserve to be thrown aside.

Night of Silence (2012)

You were scared of my moustache. You thought there was a man underneath?

[9 June 2013]

In spite of all the humanitarian efforts, there is still a widespread prevalence of child marriage in rural Eastern Turkey. Young girls who barely graduate from high school are betrothed to suitable bachelors. In some extreme cases, girls as young as 12-13 are married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers. Child brides have always been used in Turkish cinema and almost all of the previous movies simply blamed the patriarchal authority. Women consent to their fate shaped up by their fathers and husbands and young men don't really question their roles assigned to them by their forefathers. Women are naturally the victim while the men are the unquestionable oppressor.

Reis Çelik's 'Nigh of Silence' is different in a way that it tries look into the world of a child marriage inside. Without trying lose his objectivity, Mr Çelik wants to put us in the shoes of both the bride and the groom. The nameless groom is played by silver screen veteran İlyas Salman and the bride is played by Dilan Aksüt in her debut role.

In the opening sequences we see the bride paying his homage to two unidentified graves. Apparently he served quite a long time in prison and now he's back in village and he's supposed to marry the girl who is chosen for him. Reis Çelik is known for his documentary skills so the opening sequences show us a wedding which, for a moment, makes you feel like you are going to watch a documentary. The nonprofessional people used the in the wedding lacks any acting skills so the dialogue sounds quite stilted. Most of the movie is actually a high strung chamber film. The child bride knows exactly what she is supposed to do. She knows the traditional customs 'she arrived there in a white wedding dress and she'll leave only in a funeral shroud'. She is so young, so delicate that she tries anything to put off consummating their marriage in their nuptial chamber. The groom notices her delicacy and tries anything to persuade her. The groom is probably the most genteel man you would ever meet in such a culture. Reis Çelik wants us to see things from his window. He practically humanizes the groom. He is too victimized by the very customs, traditions, destiny he lives in. He is, too, helpless like the bride. He doesn't face up to the set of rules of defined by him. He doesn't defy his fate that was cut out for him years ago. In one of the most didactic scenes in the movie he even loses it and calls himself a clown and says: 'My mother says, "Marry this girl." I marry her. "Divorce her," she says. I divorce her. My uncle says, "Your mother's a stain on our honour." I kill my mother." 'Lal Gece' has a deliberately slow pace so it may feel a bit languorous, affectedly pensive or just lackadaisical for general cinema goers and that might explain why it attracted so few viewers at the theatre. For this very reason it does not really offer a scathing, harsh commentary but it might just give you some raw insight into the social conditions where the women are labelled as victims and the men are victimizers.

Body (2011)

You're so cool about everything.Sometimes,I think you're faking it.

[9 June 2013]

Vücut tells the story of a mature porn star Leyla. Leyla (Hatice Aslan) is pushing forty. She and her boyfriend Yılmaz ( Cengiz Bozkurt) had been in the adult industry for 25 years. A short while ago, they moved to Istanbul and Yılmaz ditched Leyla for another woman he picked up at a sleazy tavern. For reasons quite unknown to us, Yılmaz comes up with a last minute request before they break off all their romantic and financial relations; Leyla is supposed to do one more adult film for him. Yılmaz happens to find this twenty year old guy named İzzet (Hakan Kurtaş) to play the male partner. İzzet actually needs the money. He doesn't have a steady job and he usually wasted time in trifling jobs. Though he has never played in a porn, he takes the job. Yet, he can't find wood and he makes a real botch of a job he can hold on to for a while.

Vücut's storyline could have left one of the most indelible marks on Turkish cinema if it could just focus on Leyla and her life. We live in an age on which a sex {partner} is a product with in-built obsolescence. The spiral of the Zeitgeist demands that you look beautiful no matter how old you are, where you come from, whatever you do. You mustn't be fat, not even a bit chubby. You have to embellish your look because your look is actually your business card. For that matter, the story of Vücut is quite important. Yet, there are so many characters in 'Vücut' that the focus sways further away from Leyla and it becomes vaguely intricate. A story which would focus on Leyla with a slightly better dialogue and more convincing characters, Mustafa Nuri's story could have been an incisive social commentary. Think about this We live in a society in which people are culturally conditioned not to allow their natural sex urge to be expressed freely. In some parts of this country young people can't even walk hand in hand let alone talking about their first kiss. Ironical as it may sound, the very rural young men who can't have a few drinks with their girlfriends would boast of losing their virginity in a brothel. While female sexuality and nudity is a taboo, male licentiousness is not always frowned upon. At that point, Mustafa Nuri's story tries to make a mockery of this hypocritically self-righteous and condemnatory patriarchal attitude. While doing this, unfortunately, his characters and dialogue doesn't convince us. Let me give you a few examples. When Leyla is permanently back from Germany, her sister Nurgül (Şebnem Dilligil) invites her to dinner. When she sees Leyla doesn't have any proper dress she judges her yet secretly she covets the way she looks. To be desired at any age is a natural female urge. At the dinner table Nurgül's husband says "Looks like your ex took good care of you. You're only 3 years younger than your big sister, but she's let herself go." In spite of all the hypocrisy, a traditional man would rarely dare to say that in front of his kids. Later, we see a few young men ogling Leyla in a supermarket. A scantily-dressed woman would catch attention in anywhere where most women get dressed properly and only a few guys would eat up her with their eyes. Making asocial commentary doesn't require making sweeping generalizations. In today's Istanbul, you can see headscarved women alongside their scantily-dressed friends and there is not necessarily a tension between them. Scenes like that put a big dent in the sincerity of this story and turn it into a kitsch piece.

In spite of all of her adult industry experience Leyla acts like she is a naïve woman. When her sister questions her actions about the young man who's been chasing her : "What are you doing with him, Leyla! He's young enough to be your son." Leyla just says "I haven't done anything. I helped him. He's thanking me." She just talks like she doesn't really know where this is going. Hatice Aslan is a great actress and she's probably the best choice to play an ex porn star but the dull dialogue and unconvincing character development limits her skills. Hakan Kurtaş starring as the young boyfriend is indeed a promising actor but again the bad script makes his character unconvincing too. When he can't get it on in the studio, apparently he wants to prove his masculinity. Ostensibly, he falls in love with someone who is not afraid of displaying her nudity. He is more interested in expressing his sexuality, yet a traumatic childhood shaped by an abusive father which we witness through repetitive flashback doesn't necessarily explain his actions. Honestly, His mother (Şeyla Halis) and his sister (İlayda Süren) look more convincing. Nowadays, mothers urge their daughters not to pay much attention to their external beauty but only a few mothers leave for work without make-up. They don't really set proper examples and the young people's psyche is shaped by how they look because they do know that 'sex sells'. No matter how old they become they realize there is no stopping; they just need to think about preserving their look at any coasts. Let's hope Mustafa Nuri will offer a more convincing story next time so that we can find more to empathize with his characters.

Sons of Soil (2012)

Bullies transform into heroes in countries where independent education is not appreciated.

[2 June 2013]

*They want to open schools exploiting the nation and breaking down the social life.They want to raise spineless men at these schools, exalt and arm those men with intellect.As for the others, they want to make them their servants.Yet, only an active and coordinated workforce would shape up the future generations.This is why we established the Village Institutes.And it is why they closed them down.

**Don't bow down to cringe in front of any authority you just see. Tell the ones you don't have faith in! Tell them; I don't believe in you... (From the voice-over)

Toprağın Çocukları (The Children of the Land) is the story of 'Turkish village institutes'. Village institutes were mostly boarding schools that were set up in and around the villages. These schools would offer mixed sex education in boarding schools and they were operational between 1940 and 1954. At that time the literacy rate was extremely law and there were few schools in rural areas so the institutes were of vital importance to train villagers to get the hang of modern agriculture, better construction and more productive animal husbandry. The schools were the paragons of equality of educational opportunity. The institutes were supposed to train teachers for each village and send them back to form new village schools so the teachers would pay it forward. Unfortunately, the institutes had always been the target of anti-secularist reactionary groups. Giving co-ed education in boarding schools were unacceptable for hard-line conservatives. To promote free thinking, the students were required to read different books covering views from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, there had already been a serious fear of the Soviet Union at the time. The movement to liberate villagers, to make them dependent on only each other, to make independent, modern women out of simple village girls was a staunch enemy of the anti-socialist political Islam.

Ali Adnan Özgür's directorial debut is trying to give out a message in this film. Today's socialists should know about these schools very well. Any Turk, who at least once read some left-wing writers should know a thing or two about these schools and why they were repeatedly attacked and were forced to shut down in the end but there is a vast majority who still hasn't the faintest inkling of what these schools were all about. A lot of people still think that these schools were just a haven of 'debauched communism.' You can probably find a lot of negative things to say about this movie if you just look at it from an artistic window. The voice-over sounds blatantly didactic, which in return makes the script feel loosely packed. The most important part of the movie- why these schools were founded and why they should been protected- again was treated in the voice-over gives this movie a documentary/reenactment touch. With that in mind, let us not forget nobody has ever tried to make a movie out of village institutes before and this movie was made on a tight budget.

In spite of its flaws, Özgür's movie comes at a time on which our country faces a new educational system where we have neither enough teachers nor adequate schools, where the students are not required to analyse but just follow. Let this movie be a reminder of an uncompromising socialist stand against injustice, intolerance and inequality as the children of this land were a bunch of communists in the past, today they are a 'handful of looters'.

Broken Mussels (2011)

An unflattering mirror to modern day Istanbul...

[26 May 2013]

Seyfettin Tokmak's first feature length movie tells the story of a group of both local and foreign immigrants who have to make both ends meet in the slums of Istanbul. Hakim (Ugur Barış Mehmetoğlu) and Faysal (Seydo Çelik) are two cousins of Kurdish origin who have come to Istanbul from their native town Mardin to make some money. Their dream is to save up enough money to go to Germany. Hakim, the older one of the two street urchins, is an ambitious scamp who indulges in any sort of shenanigans that will make them some money. He doesn't refrain from filching and lying as long as he believes he will get some money which might bring him closer to his cherished dream, going to German where his relative Selim, who he believes, leads the life of Riley. Faysal, the younger and the more conscientious cousin, sounds like he cares more about how he will feed himself than going to Germany. He cares for Elma (Ipek Kizilors), the daughter of a Bosnian woman, Medina (Selma Alispahic). Elma has some sort of heart disease and apparently her mother hopes that she will be able to get some treatment there in Istanbul. They all live in a shabby, run down pension run by Cevat (Engin Benli). Cevat engages in anything illicit. He deals drugs, sells human organs for transplant, abuses hookers, and terrorizes his tenants. When his tenants fail to pay their rent, they are browbeaten into doing dirty work for Cevat. Seyfettin Tokmak gives you tranches de vie from the modern day Istanbul. The slices he offers is not you choose to see and ponder upon every day. It's not a tourist's Istanbul. It's not idyllic, not picturesque. The people who come into the fire out of the frying pan, the people who have to make a new life in their fetid doss-houses. It's true to life all right but is it something you want to see? After all, the similar stories with different people in a similar setting have been told before. Is Seyfettin Tokmak's story any different? Does it have any distinctive quality?

As much as they have no experience or presence in front of the camera, the acting skills of the children seem most convincing. For instance, I would say they are so much better than the trio of non-professional performers in Köprüdekiler (2009). On the other hand, the fact that the two cousins believe that they can take care of each other, send some money to their family and save up enough money to go Germany sounds comical enough. I am hardly convinced that they even keep writing snail-mails to someone who has barely written back. At some point you just want to scream at the screen: You can't even have a pittance to pay for your fleapit room! How could you possibly dream of going to another country?" Still, I am glad that the film did not try to appeal to people's emotions by politicizing the Kurdish brothers unlike the recent Kurdish films.

While the whole story sounds true to life, the lives of our characters do not necessarily intertwine. You can't just build a credible story over a loosely packed script. Focusing on separate events in the lives of each character could have worked if the end of the story wasn't expedited to a vague denouement in favour of something more ambiguous yet trying to be hopeful.at the same time.Seyfettin Tokmak's first feature may not be the first movie which tells the story of simple people who are in the throes of profound metropolitan change. It may not have a well-written, convincing script. It may even deliver an end, which would sound unconvincing for some but the story is gritty real and the non-professional acting is just superb. It surely deserves more publicity. It just deserves to be watched at least once.

Watchtower (2012)

Your so called 'security' is what really f*cked me!

[8 May 2013]

The Watchtower is the second feature by Pelin Esmer who has already established herself with first documentary "Oyun" ("The Play") and her debut feature "10 to 11". "10 to 11" sounded so much like a documentary film that you can say 'The Watchtower' can be regarded as her debut feature. The Watchtower tells the story of Nihat(Olgun Simsek) and Seher ( Nilay Erdonmez). Nihat works as a sentinel at a remote forest fire tower. On a fire lookout tower, his only duty is to search for wildfires. All alone in the wilderness, the only people he can communicate are the other guards who keep their colleagues posted on the intercom. Normally, the guards are changed at regular intervals so that they can get down into the town and buy stuff. When his boss can't find anyone to help Nihat out, he bears his confinement with patience. He even seems to enjoy the moments of solitude. The small building he lives, located on the edge of a high vantage point does not only maximize the viewing distance he has but also his need for the utter seclusion of the countryside. While the other guards talk about their families on the intercom, he doesn't really partake.Through his limited talks with the other guards over the intercom we learn that he blames himself for causing the death of his wife and kid in a traffic accident.Self-reproach and dejection apparently drove him further from the regular human contact, and in proportion to the amount of conscience he had by nature,he had become more and more aloof. For that matter ,Seher,who happens to work in the rural bus station where Nihat eats out and buys his stuff.,sounds like a God-sent refreshing spirit.She's actually the only one Nihat practically tries to communicate.

The solitude, the escape from something you can't just run away is actually what Seher is seeking too. She used to be a university student who lodged in her uncle's house and apparently she has been raped by her uncle. She's carrying a baby that she doesn't really want. She has nowhere to go and that remote rural bus station is just giving her some time. Both Nihat and Seher do actually run away from their past. The very past they run away from is actually what makes their story collide.

They live in a traditionalist society where there are clear-cut gender roles. In the very society which prevent women from controlling their own fertility, where sex is a taboo, where there are still honour-killings, there also child brides who are married off to guys old enough to be their grandfathers, there are incestuous rapes which are consistently covered up and there is also polygyny which is regarded as 'relatively normal.' In that sense, Esmer's minimalist movie is a slap in the face of hypocrisy. Beneath the serene beauty of idyllic forests Nihat works in, lurks a nightmare that a young woman has had to live. With scanty dialogue but brilliant acting, the actors make you feel that. They make you feel that this time Pelin Esmer made something more than a documentary. As a viewer you really feel that in spite of the slow pace of the movie. Even if you don't indulge in movies shot in long takes at a leisurely pace, in long periods of silence you feel that this film has actually so much tell. Right at that moment, you meet the ultimate dénouement which could have been expressed as a final brief scene, a bit of narration, or a short bit of action and even some talk but no our two magnificent actors talk to each other. In two minutes they say to each other more than they have ever talked in an entire movie. To justify her actions, Seher blames Nihat for killing his wife and child, for something probably he has never forgiven himself. Then you just ask yourself 'Have I been time-travelled from a minimalist artsy film into a mainstream movie?' Fortunately the movie ends and leaves you lingering there with your question.

Moskova'nin Sifresi: Temel (2012)

The adventure goes on for the hopeless romantic!

[4 May 2013]

Moskava'nın Şifresi: Temel is the sequel to "Sumela'nın Şifresi: Temel" and the story continues where we left off. You should seriously consider seeing the first movie before seeing the sequel because you might not exactly make sense of the story . As you should remember, Temel (Alper Kul), our terribly romantic hero with his artless, naïve and credulous charm ties knot with his long time platonic sweetheart after he successfully saves the life of his sweetheart Zuhal (Aslihan Güne) and hits the jackpot in the ruins of ancient Sumela. The unexpected windfall he receives is the major element which persuades Zuhal's father to let his daughter marry Temel. While Temel is ready to spill his entire his exuberance into the whole movie, the Russian mafia is ready to chase after the windfall they have just lost.

The film uses the same cast in the first movie. It's again set in Trabzon against the backdrop of a few Moscow street scenes. The humor in the movie is again the typical Black Sea comedy which is targeted at the general movie goer. The farcical situations is again irrelevant to the plot but this time the dialogue contains risqué language. Maybe they thought that a stream of saucy stories would add up some color the movie but since the scenes are ultimately irrelevant to the plot, it doesn't seem to have worked. While the street scenes in Moscow and Trabzon look cinematographically beautiful, some scenes like the picnic scene in Uzungol (a lake situated to the south of the city of Trabzon,) looks more like a rip-off from a travel agency advert which is trying to create some of publicity for the city. If this were a TV series, it would make sense but on celluloid it feels just like 'oh they must have tried to fill up time' If you like absurd comedies, see the first movie before the sequel. If you just want to kill some time without the least bit of expectations, if you don't pay much attention to details like acting, storyline, plot and if you are indeed a hopeless romantic who just wants to have some good time,go for it. You might just love it.

Love Is Blind (2011)

How far would a desperately lonely woman go?

[10 March 2013]

The duplicate entry for this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817716/combined

In its director's words "Direk Aşk" is an experimental, satirical romantic comedy. It tells the story of a desperately lonely woman who has just broken up with her lover. The day she breaks up with her lover, she happens to hold on to a traffic pole. As she is crying she presses the pedestrian push button and then suddenly the pole seems to talk to her :" Please don't cry!" She seems to be the only hearer of the flattery words the pole enunciates. As much as it sounds so unexpected, so incredible the woman can't just get herself away from the pole. İrem Altuğ, who plays the emotionally lost, confused, lonely, broken, insecure woman desperate for some love is also the writer of this story. She says she just wanted to show that men fall in love with their eyes, women with their ears As much as the movie beautifully portrays the possibility of how one lonely person could easily fall in love and out of it, I must admit that I felt uncomfortable by the undertow of feminism in this short film. Can all men be as callous as poles? It may take just a few nice words to make a desperate, broken-hearted woman to fall for the same callous, indifferent, cheating man but wouldn't that be an unfair generalization? As much as I like the fact that the movie makes fun of itself by pointing out to the frail, inscrutable human nature, I would expect more of a sophisticated story instead of making such sweeping generalizations about either gender. Still, with its original story, superb acting and lovely soundtrack, Love is Blind deserves to be watched.

Pazarlari Hiç Sevmem (2012)

Funerals, weddings, old cars, and wills in an easily forgettable movie...

[4 March 2013]

Rezzan Tanyeli's directorial debut "I don't like Sundays at all" tells the story of Oguz ( Edhem Dirvana) and Deniz (Melisa Sözen). With neither some background knowledge, nor the introduction of the characters, the movie plunges into the story. Oğuz's father is at his death bed. One thing he loves most in his old age is his vintage car. All he wants to do is just to see his car before closing his eyes forever. The thing is that Oguz's ex girl friend is about to get married and she wants to see this old jalopy as her wedding car. Oğuz can't seem to say no to her while he's on a night watch on his father's death bed.

Oğuz can't just seem get his father's words out of his head. ""Don't cause anyone trouble. Get me dressed up nicely. Take me and make me sit in the backseat and let's drive off, just you folks and me. Those who'd like to come will come anyway" Apparently his father told Oğuz the same thing at each funeral they attended so he just wants to make everything how his father wanted it to be.

And then there is Deniz, who just turns up at the wedding of Oguz's ex-girlfriend. Through funerals, weddings, old cars and wills it's all about getting Oğuz and Deniz getting together actually. Who is this girl? How does she know Oguz? Where does she come from? How can she easily end up in places where Oguz happens to be? We don't know What exactly is the story Oguz's father? What is it with the jalopy and his father's will? How on earth did Oguz and his girlfriend break up? Why didn't their love meet? Is there actually a plot I'm missing here? What about the mystic element of a car driving itself-tinged with absurd comedy and accentuated by black humor? Connecting what appears to be irrelevant and disconnected coincidental sequences to create an absurd comedy tinted with half-baked acting by a leading actor who has never acted before turns this movie into an easily forgettable homage to old family ties and traditional romance and grief.

The movie won the the Best Cinematography Award in the 49th International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival which seems to be the only memorable thing about this movie.

A Fairground Attraction (2008)

Life on a fariground is not what it seems...

[20 October 2012]

Hailed as the best Turkish movie that was received in the Venice Film Festival in 2007, A Fairground Attraction is a bittersweet, hopeless love story of two desperate lovers; Nurşen ( Zümrüt Erkin), a modern day flapper, wandering songstress reciting at the tents of a fairground and Cemal (Fatih Al) a worker who works at a construction site camped near the fairground. Unlike many of his peers, Cemal still hasn't settled down to have his own family. He's a single layman and he has to make both ends meet away from his mother. Nurşen, who has a troublesome past, has to make her own way in a fairground, which is traditionally dying out.

In his directorial debut, Mehmet Eryılmaz throws aside the well-worn romanticism that 'love conquers all'. He doesn't offer bromidic didactic lines. He has these two characters whom you can meet any time anywhere but he doesn't make two stereotypical characters, who parrot some time-worn love words, out of them. Even their dialogue is not conforming completely to any pattern that you might suppose that two people in love would have followed. As a viewer, you don't really know anything about these two characters except the little bits and pieces they are telling each other, which doesn't sound enough to know something about somebody so you do ask yourself why two people in love talk so little and when they do speak they don't tell much either. What makes them attracted to each other? Clearly, they don't feel it as a seasonal fling. They don't seem to physically make out either. Maybe they are simply attracted to each other because both of them are wanderers who don't have the independence to settle down anywhere. Maybe it's this very thing, the lack of this independence that they can't really be together no matter how much they're in love? The hopelessness of this love story, the essence of the misery of these wanderers against the backdrop the traditional fairground culture which has been dying out as a result of urbanization could be the reason behind Eryilmaz's systematic effort not to focus on the cinematography that could easily achieve bucolic grace with simple shots of a stunning landscape. As much as it's laudable that the film was shot in three different real fairgrounds, excluding real fairground performers seems to be a minus for this movie. With better dialogue, well-paced music, and a more convincing storyline this movie could be have been the crème de la crème. Still, it's a shame that this movie has been voted by only 13 people since it was released 4 years ago. It's well-worth your time.

Umut Adasi (2006)

A genuine human drama marred by stereotypes and stilted dialogue.

[30 September 2012]

The real life stories of naive people falling prey to ruthless, opportunist human traffickers are not unfamiliar for Turkish people as we're accustomed to see illegal immigrants' boat sink off Turkish coast, killing scores every year. Turkey is the transit road for any illegal immigrant who wants to go northern Europe. The flow of Kurdish, Arabic, and Pakistani, Afghan, African and Iranian etc people who travel to Turkey to enter Greece through vessels crossing the Mediterranean is hard to constrain. The lives of an estimated number of 1 million or more illegal immigrants in transit from Turkey to Europe should be an easy kick to create a well-planned, well-executed genuine story out of heart-rending human drama. Unfortunately, Turkish cinema hasn't been much productive to create realistic stories about the plight of these people. Greece, which accuses Turkey of being negligent of its neighborhood duties and trying to change the Greek social and ethic profile hasn't even produced a movie on this matter. While fellow Turkish cinema-makers in Germany is trying to tell the stories of Turkish Gasterbeiter in Germany with movies like "Head-On" "Kurz und schmerzlo", "Chiko" and "Willkommen in Deutschland", we haven't seen any stories about the lives of Turkish immigrants in other countries like England and Belgium. For that matter, the place of "Umut Adası" in Turkish cinema is different. In his first directorial debut, Mustafa Kara tries to tell the story of a bunch of young Turkish illegal immigrants each of whom comes from different backgrounds. Asil (Halef Tiken) who is a bodyguard at a nightclub is running away from police because he man-slaughtered a guy in the middle of a bar fight. Yusuf (Gürkan Tavukçuoglu) wants to get away from his small hometown after he lost his father, the only close relative he had. Vildan (Arzu Yanardağ) a university graduate who has au pair connection to improve her English has to leave her father, the only parent she has. Tuğra (Alihan Yücesoy) a rich playboy who tries to find meaning in his life joins a team of smugglers to know more about those helpless people. As much as this sounds like an engaging story with interesting characters, Mustafa Kara makes a common mistake in his fledgling take into the life of illegal immigrants. He stereotypes every character he creates. The Turkish characters do all seem to be coming from traditionalist families. They have strong familial connections at the beginning. However, their strong ties seem to be easily broken up when they meet up Westerners who are again stereotypically titillated by the enticements of the flesh-sex, drugs and alcohol. Yusuf becomes a junkie because of he becomes infatuated with a scantily-dressed English girl. Vildan becomes a whore because she can't stand the attitude of her dike landlady. Asil forms a new romantic attachment just because the opportunity rose up. That sort of loose, occasional character development undermines the genuinity of this story. The stilted, poor dialogue is another minus for the movie. When the illegal immigrants travel under cramped conditions in a densely packed vessel they start to talk about each other. One of the characters says: "My brother is in Man- What was that? - Manchester." We're living in a global world and even an uneducated Turk knows about Manchester these days. When you try to make something more believable that it already is, you may achieve the opposite and then it just sounds so idiotic. English teaching course in the movie did sound dubious too. ESL world stopped that "repeat after me" thing years ago. Serious language courses teach their students with native speakers through communicative methods. You don't have to go all the way up to England to be tutored by a non-native ESL teacher with an accent. A self-motivated learner of English with Raymond Murphy':s Grammar in Use under her armpit is not a sight for only Londoners either. The fact that all our characters turned out to be a bunch of misfits who found the straight path by returning to their homeland sounds like it's doing injustice to millions of Turkish people who have accomplished something as legitimate European citizens.

Kaos: Örümcek Agi (2012)

Örümcek Ağı doesn't really deliver on its marketing promises to the fans of political-action thrillers.

[10 September 2012]

One of the oldest and largest fraternal organizations of the world who see themselves as the descendants of the stonemasons who built the Temple destroyed by the Babylonians 2500 years ago is now trying to establish a World Empire, in the promised lands, in the Middle East and Turkey is at the heart of this plan. While this secret power has a foothold in the business world, media, army, police and political parties who will fight against them? A security organization named the National Security Organisation (UGT) known only to a select few…

Such a great premise should be the hook which actually grabs the attention of true thriller fans shouldn't it? After all a movie, which claims to have something to say on Turkey's deep-state power struggles and political movements sweeping across the Middle East should be interesting, shouldn't it? Well… not exactly? Kaos looks more like a popcorn video clip than a feature length movie. Imagine an international power having shell companies all over the world is trying to establish an empire in the Middle East and your biggest undercover secret service has been exposed and all you've got is a reckless, overconfident and explosion-centric captain. (Gökhan Mumcu) He's the ultimate cardboard cut-out from any Hollywood action movie. The fate of a whole country rests on his shoulders and yes he's been betrayed by almost everyone including his wife, who's been a counter-agent as you can easily guess. The film's official website claims that the action sequences offer a cinematic feast to true action fans. Our captain's fights choreographed in slow motion are so mind-boggling that you start yawning after a while :) The dialogue in the movie is ingenious too. Apart from the sleek, eloquent dialogue by our captain we have a stranded man whose car has been stolen. When men in black approaches they ask "what the problem is" our man in distress answers "They stole my car, man!" The glorious men in black answers back ".What brand was it?-Connect. Don't worry, we'll find your car" The poor's guy answer is hard to find "God bless you! Thank you, thank you!" The man in black remembers that he didn't ask for license number so he just asks for the number before he puts a bullet in the man's head. I wonder why no Turkish script writer has ever thought about this before. I think I should just not lengthen my comment more and leave you to watch this stupidly-scripted clunky clone with stilted acting,zero character development and wooden dialogue driven by chaotic mess.

Korkuluk (2011)

Kudos to the promising film-maker Adem Demirci!

[28 August 2012]

If Ayşegül Şahinbozkır's short film "Milk"and Adem Demirci's short film "Scarecrow" hadn't received the jury special awards at The Los Angeles Turkish Film Festival (LATFF-2012)local cineastes wouldn't probably have heard about these two original short movies which offer a breath of fresh art for the Turkish cinema which sounds like, every now and then, it runs out of original stories as much as good, well laid out adaptations. Since both movies are available for free viewing on vimeo, everybody who has some passion for the silver screen should just go and see these movies to who some support for the laudable efforts of these two young filmmakers. However much I like the art of cinema, I can't seem to like movies with scanty dialogue and too much symbolism. For that matter, I am surprised that I actually liked Adem Demirci's Scarecrow because there's no dialogue in the movie.The scarecrow tells the story of a young woman grieving the loss of her husband. It seems like she just can't come to terms with her loss and she imputed her the fear,the sense of insecurity which her husband imposed on her,to a scarecrow after her husband's death. As much as there's symbolism in her story, Damla Sönmez's most convincing portrayal of this young woman,who's torn apart between her sense of bereavement and her fears,turns this symbolism into some art that can be reified into a social reality that the audience can be easily empathized with.

Süt (2011)

Two thumbs up!

[27 August 2012]

One man (Levent Can) all alone in a distant shack in the middle of a cool, refreshing quasi-mountainous landscape surrounded by lush green fields is on the brink of suicide. He wraps a noose around his neck and he seems to be prepared for his ultimate end. Who knows what brought him up to this point? Simply depression? Lack of ability to connect with the world? Constantly looking for the meaning of life and being fed up with questioning it? Or just a sudden an occasional bout of melancholy? No matter what causes him to think about suicide, it's only a few milk bottles that will keep him connected to the world he lives in. Why do we always try to find supernatural, divine explanations for ostensibly unnatural phenomena? If we didn't see any signs of a divinity, would we fix ourselves in denial? Does our eventual serenity depend on our sense of wonder? Ayşegül Şahinbozkır's original, creative and smart short makes one ask such questions. These are not easy questions with clear-cut answers. I guess each one of us has our own answers and the way each one us find our way (if we can) to serenity must lurk in the details of our relief from feelings of insignificance and uncertainty.

P.S This superb short film is available on vimeo https://vimeo.com/29681204

Fløjteløs (2010)

Find your own voice, sing your heart song birdie!

[14 August 2012]

Imagine a whistle-less bird living in a cacophony of city noises coming from all directions. Well, Fløjteløs is the story of a bird who can't just whistle while everyone- other birds, traffic warden and a little girl can whistle perfectly. The little bird flies here and there to ask for a little piece of advice on how to whistle. What happens when the bird finally decides to take some real initiative to practice? Well go on and see this sweet,creative short animation about a little bird who wants find his/her own voice. It's available on vimeo. (The blurb on vimeo says " The film was made using thousands of potato prints which were then scanned in and used as textures for the animation". Amazing right?)

The Truth About Stanley (2012)

"England has seen a 23% increase in rough sleeping in just 12 months. In London alone, nearly 4,000 people were reported sleeping rough during 2010 and 2011."

[4 August 2012]

The other day I saw the movie the First Grader (2010) starring Oliver Litondo as the ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school at 84. After having watched the movie, I watched a couple of interviews about the movie on you-tube. To my surprise, I learnt that Oliver Litondo hasn't acted about twenty years. I thought he was really good. I checked his IMDb entry and I saw he played in this short film after that. I found "The Truth About Stanley" on vimeo. "No home, no belongings, plenty of baggage,"reads the film's concise summary on vimeo. For those who expect to find the truth about Stanley, the film doesn't offer much in a nonlinear,abstract storyline. Oliver Litondo plays a homeless Congolese man, who likes to tell stories. He doesn't seem to care about the stark realities of life by hanging on to his vivid imagination. He says "That's what happens when you start to lose yourself. Memories come that much easier. His only close friend seems to be Sam (Raif Clarke), another homeless, a runaway kid. He doesn't seem to be as carefree as Stanley. "You just sit there, making up stories. Why do you act like everything's alright? It's not all right." He says. While Stanley finds comfort in his stories, Sam creates this chimerical image of a devoted father he never had. I guess, everyone of us has our ways to deal with personal trauma and escape from realities. With its symbolic scenes, inconclusive storyline, scanty dialogue, and gloomy cinematography the film takes its power from the music contributions by Radiohead ("Give Up the Ghost") and Mumford & Sons ("I Gave You All"),along with a piano score by composer Jon Opstad throughout the film. The Truth About Stanley tries to attract attention to the growing homelessness problem in the UK and that's why they offer the film to the world to watch for free. If they didn't, this some twenty minute film would be hard to sell.

Detachment (2011)

Tony Kaye's Camuesque take into the life of a floater.

[30 July 2012]

I have seen quite a few 'teacher movies' so far. Some movies (like Stand and Deliver or the Ron Clark Story) focus on the success of a young idealist teacher who achieves an unprecedented test score with a bunch of unruly and mostly poor minority kids. Some movies focus on factual teaching and the teaching environment (Up the down Staircase) but few movies actually tell about relationships and how to relate to people. (One Eight Seven-1997)

I think Detachment is one of those few movies which can be placed in the third category. Detachment opens with a quote from the existentialist writer Albert Camus, "And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world." We possibly read this quote from the journal of a jaded substitute teacher named Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) who happens to come highly recommended as the best sub on the call sheet. Camus always presented his readers with dualisms- happiness and sadness, dark and light and in this case attachment and detachment. Henry Barthes floats from school to school and tries to teach but his real responsibility is to maintain order and try to get his below grade level students caught up. Naturally, he never stays long enough in any school to form the slightest patina of sentient attachment.

Let's face it. Henry doesn't really fit the 'teacher archetype'. For so long, teachers have been portrayed as trailblazers, saviours, agents of social change and the ultimate guides. The celluloid teachers start off as youthful (not in the physical sense-think about LouAnne Johnson-My Posse don't do Homework) idealists who think they can get to reach any kid if they try hard enough. Unfortunately, regardless of their academic training, they seem to be so detached from the harsh realities of the quotidian teaching environment. For instance, it doesn't matter that 'Up the Down Staircase' was made in 1967 because Ron Clark(2006) still seems to be as unprepared as Sylvia Barrett for what will face them. Surely somebody must have told them as a student "Forget all the B.S they taught you in college. You can't learn how to teach by listening to a bunch of lecturers in a conference room." And for most of the time,these idealist celluloid teachers seem to be left alone in their fight to reach out for kids that are pushed down to the garbage of the education system and they remonstrate with their colleagues who just don't believe that every kid deserves one more chance.Moreover, most of these celluloid teachers don't have romantic relationships in their life. (Take Roberta Guaspari in Music of the Heart. She waits for her two young boys to become grown-up young men to date somebody after ten years) Is loneliness a prerequisite to become a devoted teacher? In 'Detachment' we see that not every teacher has to be another Jamie Escalante. All teachers have things that they have to deal with and they take their problems home with them at night and they just bring some of these problems with them back to school in the morning.Sometimes, the very helplessness of a teacher, being adrift in the sea of education with no answers, the very realization of that helplessness with no buoy at his reach while he should be the one throwing a buoy is what humanizes a teacher.

That's why each one us feel that detachment every now and then. Somehow we're connected to everything and everybody and yet so detached. The two extremes or dualisms that we have to go for every day create this kind of explosive catharsis. Henry who had a troubled childhood, who have become so detached in the throes of apathetic students, blasé colleagues and frayed administrations, still finds himself attached to a runaway teen (Sami Gayle)-who finds him gentle and the most kind, a creative but underestimated student (Betty Kaye) who sees him as a faceless man in an empty room, and a colleague (Christina Hendricks) who can be judgmental sometimes. I guess, these attachments are the very hope that Tony Kaye imprints in the hearts of the viewers in a seemingly mean, loveless world.

Before Your Eyes (2009)

Does Min Dit live up to the hype?

[5 July 2012]

Min Dit (literally 'I Saw) claims to be the most controversial movie which travels into the uncharted territories of the booming Turkish film industry which has turned out to be multi-faceted, complex, and highly innovative over the last decade. Some of the recent Turkish movie makers are regarded as brave cineastes, who don't dodge politically or socially sensitive subjects. For that matter, Miraz Bezar seems to have won the hearts of some critics already, with his directorial debut hailed by some as the most controversial movie of the Turkish cinema. However, does Mind Dit actually live up to the hype? That's the question. We know that a lot of mainstream critics have been delivering eulogies for the movie. The very fact makes the impression that the movie may have been heavily hyped up given the fact the total viewers that the movie attracted at the box office was a bit more than 24.000. But you know what they say: 'You must judge each film on its own merits, without any preconceived notions about what it's like ' Regardless of the box office failure and the adulation of critics I decided to see this movie German-based Kurdish filmmaker Miraz Bezar holds to a notion that he can shed some light on the immediate history of Turkey through the eyes of kids. Ten-year-old Gülistan (Senay Orak) and her brother, Fırat (Muhammed Al) lead the story. (Two non-professional child actors were casted by the director after he had met them on a bus trip to the East of Turkey.) When their politically active parents were killed by paramilitary forces and their aunt is gone missing soon after that, the two siblings were forced to take care their each other and their baby sister. The problem with Bezar's story starts here actually. Just like the previous examples, he preserves the old notion of 'evil Turk', especially in the representation of Turkish security officers in the region. The gendarmerie officer Bezar creates is not only reflected as a murderer but he is also an adulterer. His examination of family life of a Turkish officer (hey look he doesn't just kill Kurds but he also shags Kurds) displays a silent undertow of racism. By showcasing a group of juvenile Kurdish delinquents, Bezar seems to tell you that these kids had no choice to be a part of prostitution, organized larceny and violence. The movie shows their father as a simple journalist who tries to make his living. This has never been the case within the region. They have always been highly politicized families. You can ask any public officer (teachers, doctors, engineers) about their experiences in the region. Just a 7 year old kid starting the primary school asks you which party you've just voted. This sounds like a shock to you because you would never expect a kid to be so involved in politics. Another wrong impression the movie gives is that it sounds like those people would be so much better off without the security personnel there. The camera focuses on choppers of the Turkish army and to a foreign eye; the movie makes a haphazard or even an ignorant analogy with Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine. Some foreigners would even assume Turkey is the invader in the region. Do you know what happens when Turkish soldiers do not happen to be at the right place at the right time? You can Google 'blood feuds in the Southeast of Turkey' and you can learn how every year in "blood for blood" vendettas pass from Kurdish generations over land disputes, grazing rights or matters of family honor. It's such a common thing a Kurdish family kill off another Kurdish family over a petty grazing field that violence doesn't make the news anymore.You want another example? In the last earthquake that Turkey experienced in Van (a city close to the border) tens of relief trucks have been plundered. They carried away tents and clothing desperately needed elsewhere and sold in the black market. When the reporter of CNNTURK (Turkish branch of CNN) asked the mayor about the plundering which the news channel was giving a live coverage of, you know what Mr. Mayor said? He said "We don't seem to have enough security here " I believe sensible Kurds saw the better picture of events when the supposedly pro-Kurdish terrorist organization manipulated the confusion of the earthquake to wage fresh attacks against security forces, rather than to help their own kind in such dire need. At another scene in the movie you see Fırat, a boy who is having problems with his math homework. The guest of the house, who is being hidden from the police, helps the kid "Do you have problems with Turkish?" and translates the simple problem into Kurdish. What do you understand from this scene? A foreigner would assume Kurds can't study because the medium of education is in Turkish. Somebody should ask the director whether he was taught in Turkish in Germany? Surely he must have had some education in German, right? If you want to have a patina of racial fairness and balance about your movie you need more than a kid who can't just divide 360 with 3. Every year thousands of Kurdish students walk into medical schools, law school etc in this country. If you want to say age old Turkish only and anti-bilingual education movements share restrictionist elements you need more than victimization of a race. If this ethnic conflict were as simple as Bezar reflected, it would not end on one of these days. Lots of democratic reforms have been made over the last 10-15 years. Prime Minister Erdogan's latest statement that Kurdish might be taught in school as a selective course won't end violence. As long as some Kurdish people ask for a separate country ( as the kids around the bonfire sing for it in the movie) no democratic reforms will be enough. If that were so, Turkey wouldn't be losing more soldiers than ever now.