‘Watchtower’ (Gözetleme Kulesi)

Slight yet quietly engaging Turkish drama as personal tragedy sees the paths of two unconnected people cross.

Nihat (Olgun Simsek) descends from the bus at the intersection of a remote forest track to walk the rest of the way to the watchtower at the top of the peak. Looking to take refuge from the world around him, he has taken a job as a park warden. Student Seher (Nilay Erdönmez) works as a bus hostess and lives in a makeshift room at the local bus station. She is also looking to escape. As their paths inevitably cross, so the two eventually find support from each other.

Guilt and trauma are explored by writer/director Pelin Esmer in her understated and subtle drama. Quiet, sensitive performances from the two leads are a balance to the more emotive outbursts from the owner of the bus station (Menderes Samancilar) and Seher’s parents.

Rating: 63%

Director: Pelin Esmer (11’e 10 Kala Something Useful)

Writer: Pelin Esmer (11’e 10 Kala Something Useful)

Main cast: Olgun Simsek (Yazi Tura, Karisik Pizza), Nilay Erdönmez (Horoz Dövüsü, Yüzlesme), Menderes Samancilar (Sis, My Father’s Wings)

’The Edge of Heaven’ (Auf der anderen Seite)

Intertwined narratives and personalities as the lives of Turks and Germans are drawn together by circumstance.

Complex yet controlled, director Fatih Akin explores the commonalities and gaps between cultures and individuals. A lonely old man (Tuncel Kurtiz) forges a link with Yeter, a sex worker (Nursel Köse). Her death results in the old man’s scholarly son (Baki Davrak) travelling to Istanbul in search of Yeter’s adult daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay). But, a political activist, Ayten has fled Turkey and travelled to Bremen in search of her mother.

As the stories and characters overlap so past and present are reconciled. It doesn’t always work – the Ayten/Lotte relationship is overly strident and and not wholly convincing. But overall, gentle, intimate and intricate, The Edge of Heaven is ultimately the story of the ties that bind, the love between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons – but also a love for home.

Rating: 63%

Director: Fatih Akin (Soul Kitchen, In the Fade)

Writer: Fatih Akin (Soul Kitchen, In the Fade)

Main cast: Baki Davrak (Crimean, Our Grand Despair), Tuncel Kurtiz (The Herd, Jailbreak), Nurgül Yesilçay (Coming Soon, Adam & the Devil)

‘The Pigeon’

A gentle, nuanced film from first time director Banu Sivaci, The Pigeon is a bittersweet tale of choice and life in the margins as Yusuf struggles to relate to the world outside the rooftop terrace of his family home.

Set in Adana in southern Turkey, The Pigeon sees Yusuf (Kemal Burak Alper – You Know Him, TV’s Ariza) relate only to his pigeons, a passion inherited from his now-deceased grandfather. It’s something not understood by his older brother, who forces Yusuf into menial work to financially contribute to the household. But the more time spent away from the rooftops has its consequences.

Unassuming, with the boy’s affinity to his birds beautifully captured, The Pigeon is an understated parable of our time as Yusuf finds himself in a world he ultimately does not understand wanting to return to a world not understood by others.

Rating: 60%

‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’

An immersive slow burn, a group of law enforcers drive through the night in rural Turkey looking for the burial place of a murder victim. It’s an epic procedural narrative of character insight as frustrations rise to the surface.

A film of observations, auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Winter Sleep, The Wild Pear Tree) allows his tale to unfold at a gentle, real time pace with the doctor (Muhammet Uzuner – Yesilçam, Unseen) a voyeur on proceedings. A late night meal at a local mayor’s compound, aimless driving directed by the accused who has little memory of the landscape, an increasingly angry police commissioner: it’s a world of uncertainties and insecurities as dawn slowly breaks.

Rating: 64%

‘Autumn’ (Sonbahar)

Quiet and unassuming, Turkish director Özcan Alper’s directorial debut evokes a deeply-ingrained melancholia within the dank autumnal landscape of the Black Sea eastern hinterlands.

On his release after 10 years as a political prisoner, Yusuf (Onur Saylak), in poor health, returns to the family home where his mother lives alone in the beautiful but isolated landscapes inland from the Black Sea. Unable to find any true sense of belonging, travelling between home and the nearest town, a relationship develops between Yusuf and Eka, a Georgian sex worker (Megi Kobaladze).

Two lost, lonely souls searching – for understanding, for knowledge, for personal identity. Sense of home – the land, the sea, the people – is explored in its natural and unassuming beauty in a lament where so little happens but so much takes place.

Rating: 68%

Director: Özcan Alper (Future Lasts Forever, Memories of the Wind)

Writer: Özcan Alper (Future Lasts Forever, Memories of the Wind)

Main cast: Onur Saylak (Daha, TV’s Wounded Love), Megi Kobaladze (Wet Sand, Inhale-Exhale), Serkan Keskin (The Wild Pear Tree, Butterflies)

‘The Small Town’ (Kasaba)

The debut feature of Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, The Small Town is a moment, a time, a place of village life as seen through the eyes of two children. Realism prevails as the seasons pass with children huddled round the classroom heater, socks dripping from melting snow or listening to stories repetitively told by the grandfather sitting round the autumnal outdoor fire, fresh corn smoking in the flames.

Shot in grainy black and white and with predominantly non-professional actors (many from Ceylan’s own extended family), it’s a stylised, slow yet beautiful meander, an ode to rural life. Little happens – The Small Town is a contemplation, a meditation.

Rating: 63%

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep)

Writer: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep)

Main cast: Mehmet Emin Toprak (Clouds of May, Distant), Muzaffer Özdemir (Clouds of May, Distant)

Best of Year (2016) -Film

As mentioned in an earlier post, 2016 was not awash, in my opinion, with great films. Lots of good ones, a few that didn’t quite live up to expectations or some abject failures. Hence my top 10 for the year is noticeable by its lack of US ‘studio’ films and dominated by European ‘sensibility’. There’s little room for last year’s big critical darlings – only Spotlight making the cut from the Oscar nominated best films. No The Revenant or The Big Short (the latter sitting just outside the top 10).

To be honest, I was a little surprised by the way my list panned out – but it’s all based on my own percentage rating and rings true. ‘Story’ dominated – whilst I’m not averse to action and adventure, it’s the narrative that is all-important. So the indie productions are well-represented.

My top 10 films for the 2016:

10=: Captain Fantastic (Canada) w/Viggo Mortensen
Mr Gaga (Israeli documentary) dir/Tomer Heymann
7=:    The Hateful 8 (US) w/Samuel L. Jackson
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (New Zealand) w/Sam Neill
The Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia)
5=:    Spotlight (US) w/Michael Keaton
Hell or High Water (US) w/Chris Pine
4:      Indignation (US) w/Logan Lerman
3:      Nocturnal Animals (US) w/Amy Adams
2:      Mustang (Turkey/France)
1:      I, Daniel Blake (UK) dir/Ken Loach

Quiet, social commentary films are there in numbers – the devasting Ken Loach Cannes Palme d’Or winner, I Daniel Blake sitting atop the list as my favourite film of the year. That was a little unexpected knowing La La Land was my last film of 2016. Going by critical response, I anticipated the Damien Chazelle homage to Hollywood musicals of the 50s to be the film of the year. It was good – but not that good, as indicated by its failure to feature in my top 10.

Both Mustang and The Embrace of the Serpent were nominated for last year’s best foreign language film – but they lost out to the Hungarian Holocaust drama, Son of Saul. You can see my opinion (Son of Saul came in around 15th for the year on my selection). The other foreign language film on the list, Mr Gaga, is the superb documentary focussing on Israeli contemporary dance choreographer, Ohad Naharin.

Both Hell or High Water and Nocturnal Animals share the presence of a Texan sheriff as crucial to the storyline – the underrated Michael Shannon in Tom Ford’s elegant suspense feature and the show-stealing Jeff Bridges in Hell or High Water.

Disappointing not to see a local Australian film in the list but the Antipodes is represented by the most successful New Zealand film ever made – the irrepressible Hunt for the Wilderpeople. And its back-to-nature setting is mirrored by the alternative upbringing of the (large) Cash family in the Washington State wilderness of Captain Fantastic.

‘Mustang’

A quietly powerful story of the sexual and social awakening of five young sisters in  conservative regional Turkey.

Parented by their grandmother and uncle, the five are contained within the home as neighbours complain about the girls’ behaviour.

Described as the Turkish The Virgin Suicides, debut director Deniz Gamze Ergüven draws out sensitive performances as the joy of (fully clothed) playfulness on the beach is replaced by strict control and bars on all the windows of their home.

Mustang was shortlisted for the 2016 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (lost out to Son of Saul).

Rating: 83%

Director: Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Writer: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour (Disorder, Augustine)

‘Winter Sleep’ (Kis Uykusu)

Ouch. My bum is still numb – 190 minutes of a beautifully unfolding drama set in stunningly weird landscape of Cappadocia in central Turkey during the winter months.

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is renowned for building slowly (his last, the award-winning crime drama Once Upon a Time in Anatolia fairly zipped along at 157 minutes!) – so don’t expect fireworks. Winter Sleep is almost theatrical in structure – six or seven scenes over the course of the film where characters (mainly in twos and threes) converse and discuss issues of concern. It’s a serious film with little light relief (so no shame in admitting to a little semi-dozing here and there). But stick with it – resolve is rewarded.

Winter Sleep collected the Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Rating: 77%

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, The Small Town)

Writer: Ebru Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,Three Monkeys), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, The Small Town) based on Anton Chekhov’s The Wife

Main cast: Haluk Bilginer (Polis, Innocence), Melisa Sözen (Pazarlari Hiç Sevmem, Hunting Season), Ayberk Pekcan (Hair, Love & Revolution), Demet Akbag (Hükümet Kadin, Eyyvah Eyvah)