STRAY - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 1

 

I am not a dog person and I really didn't connect with STRAY - an award-winning doc by Elizabeth Lo about stray dogs in Istanbul.  It focusses on three dogs and gives us a dog-eye-level view of life on the streets. The pleasure I had in the film were seeing those insights and I kind of wished the dogs were out of the way.  I know the film wants to tell me something deep and meaningful about how we treat homeless dogs vs homeless Syrian refugees but honestly I just want to focus on the latter.  There's so much political and religious and social conflict and crisis and nuance in Turkey today, I cannot believe this was the subject path the director took! Finally, we end up with a kind of dog's fantasy scene of strays gambolling in the countryside. It was all just too twee for words. 

STRAY played Bergen and HotDocs 2020 where it won Best International Feature. It is currently playing at the BFI London Film Festival. It has a running time of 70 minutes.

TAKEN 2

Liam Neeson continues to capitalise on his career hand-break turn into hard-boiled action hero, with this mechanical, shameless cash-in of a sequel, TAKEN 2.  Despite being directed competently by the deliciously named Olivier Megaton (TRANSPORTER 3), this movie is really the brain-fart of writer-producer Luc Besson, and betrays all his simplistic sexual and racial politics.  As the flick opens, Neeson's super security guard Bryan Mills takes a job in Turkey, after which he is joined by his teenage daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and his ex-wife-on-whom-he-is-crushing Lenore (Famke Janssen).  Ex-husband and wife are soon kidnapped by the vengeful father of the goon Bryan killed in the original movie, leaving Kim alone in the hotel, also prey to hitmen.  The first half of the film sees Kim guided improbably by her father to locate and help him escape. The second half sees her safely deposited in the US Embassy and Bryan return to the fray to rescue his ex-wife and do bad things to bad guys.  

Of course, the story has so many plot holes and improbabilities that one could drive a horse and cart through it.  (Not least the fact that as Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, it doesn't have a US Embassy!)  But that's not the point of a movie like this.  The point is whether or not you find the chase sequences entertaining and tense.  I didn't.  They felt derivative and "tab A into slot B".  Of course, Liam Neeson is enormously likeable, and we root for him, but this movie really is far tamer and more boring than the original.  Moreover, the politically dubious depiction of evil muslim gangsters remains troubling. 

TAKEN 2 is on release in France, Hong Kong, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore and the UK. It opens tomorrow in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the USA and Vietnam. It opens on October 11th in Cambodia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Peru, Slovenia; on October 12th in Bulgaria, Estonia, India and South Africa; on October 19th in Panama; on October 26th in Lithuania; on November 22nd in the Netherlands; on December 20th in Macedonia and on January 11th in Japan.

TAKEN 2 has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THREE MONKEYS / UC MAYMUN - brutal, languid, tragic

"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil".

THREE MONKEYS is set in motion by a hit and run accident on a mountain road. But Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan doesn't make films where you see crucial events presented as beautifully staged set pieces. Rather, his movies focus on the emotional consequences of events - lingering over glances, refusing to pull away from brutal arguments - mining the internal lives of his characters. The protagonists are neither paragons nor villains. They are complex and have shifting loyalties. Take, for instance, the man who causes the accident. He's an oleaginous, cynical politician who bribes his driver to take the rap but later seems almost sympathetic and vulnerable. The driver and his son are at once domineering and listless. Both condemn others but themselves resist guilt - passing it forward, remaining complicit, callow, victimised. Look at the driver's wife: an equally fascinating but shifting character. With small gestures she transforms from a mousy, put-upon house-wife into a woman rediscovering her sexuality.

As with all Ceylan films, the intensity of the emotional journey is matched by evocative cinematography. DP Gokhan Tiryaki manages to shoot a deserted rail track or a decrepit concrete building and make it look as fascinating and evocative as a sweeping panorama of the Bosphorus. All of this adds up to a movie in which every gesture, every glance is meaningful, and where the audience can be oppressed by the tension. This has been taken by some as a fault of the movie. It's true: it's no easy watch. But that is, I think, it's strength.

UC MAYMUN played Cannes 2008 where Nuri Bilge Ceylan won Best Director, beating Clint Eastwood (CHANGELING); Soderbergh (CHE); Ari Folman (WALTZ WITH BASHIR) and the Dardennes Brothers (THE SILENCE OF LORNA). Indeed, the only director in the list that I feel was unfairly overlooked was Paolo Sorrentinto for the outstanding IL DIVO. UC MAYMUN also played Toronto 2008. It opened last year in Taiwan, Turkey, Mexico, Norway, Greece and Portugal. It opened earlier this year in Croatia and France and opens this weekend in the UK. It opens in Germany on March 19th.

London Film Festival Day 2 - LOVE LIVE LONG

LOVE LIVE LONG is the latest film by the pioneering British director Mike Figgis. It had a bizarre genesis as a vanity project of the Gumball 3000 - an annual event involving a bunch of flash tossers driving high-spec cars very fast on public roads because - hey - road safety is for peasants. Anyways, the Gumball spivs gave Figgis £100k and said he could make a movie about anything so long as it featured Gumball. Much like Shane Meadows' recent SOMERS TOWN, Figgis' LOVE LIVE LONG happily takes the money, makes a provocative movie and, if anything, subverts the corporate brand.

The film is essentially an improvised two-hander set in Istanbul. Sophie Winkelman (Big Suze in PEEP SHOW) plays an emotionally scarred young woman who gets off on being sexually degraded by a casually cruel flash git Gumball driver, played by Daniel Lapaine. The movie shows their first encounter in an Istanbul market, their involvement during the rally, and hints at the disaster that is to follow.

I loved the tension and raw emotion of the scenes in Istanbul and the denoument. The only mis-step was, in my view, the insertion of a very funny but jarring scene just prior to the finale.

LOVE LIVE LONG played London 2008.

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN/AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE - contrived cultural drama

AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE is not a poor film by any means, but I don't think it lives up to the art-house hype. Certainly, in a year of 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS; NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, I find it hard to believe that Fatih Akin won Best Screenplay at Cannes 2007.

The movie is set in contemporary Germany and Turkey. An old Turkish man in Bremen offers a Turkish prostitute a place in his house in return for exclusive services. At first, it seems a rather naive, romantic gesture. She is being harassed by religious fundamentalists so she accepts. We have been forewarned by a surtitle that the woman will be killed but I love how writer-director Fatih Akin still manages to take the audience by surprise. Sadly, credible surprise soon turns to contrived implausible events. It starts when the old man's grown son goes back to Turkey to find the dead woman's daughter. Rather improbably, he gives up his job as a German professor and impetuously buys a book shop in Istanbul.

The second segment centres on the dead women's daughter, a radical political agitator on the lam from the Turkish police. She hops a plane to Hamburg and is taken in by a sweet German languages student, much to her conservative mother's disgust. The two girls begin an affair, but the radical is soon deported and the German follows her to Istanbul. She remains in Istanbul for months, trying to fight her lover's incarceration. Improbably, she finds herself lodging with the old Turkish man's son.

The third segment of the movie sees all the story-lines come together in a manner that was so contrived as to be alienating. I left the cinema admiring Fatih Akin's ability to portray modern Turkish life, but less convinced that he had said anything particularly meaningful about racial and nationalist politics. The story, which had begun so promisingly, had disappeared into a small, trite, neatly-packaged box. Still, the movie is almost, but not quite, worth seeing for Patrycia Ziolkowska's heart-wrenching performance as the love-lorn German girl, Lotte, and the brilliant sound-track.

AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE/THE EDGE OF HEAVEN played Cannes 2007 where Fatih Akin won Best Screenplay. It also played Toronto 2007 and Berlin 2008. It opened in 2007 in Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Italy, Belgium and France. It opened earlier in 2008 in Norway, Greece, Jong Kong, Portugal and the Netherlands. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in March in Finland, Spain and Israel. Finally, it opens in the US on May 21st.

CLIMATES/IKLIMLER - brutally honest

CLIMATES is the latest film from the Turkish auteur, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (UZAK). It is an uncompromising, unflinching examination of an emotionally abusive relationship. Ceylan plays a middle-aged university lecturer who treats his younger girlfriend with a casual indifference. Bored with her, he suggests a split. He has a brief fling with a more sexually and emotionally confident woman, but is stung by a reference to his ex-girlfriend. He offers himself to her again, with promises of reform. She refuses him but - and this is no spoiler to those who know the fatalistic, bleak nature of Ceylan's work - eventually relents.

From such thin material, Ceylan creates a visceral, painful portrait of a woman who goes back into an unsatisfactory relationship knowingly, and with quiet, tearful resignation. He also creates a character in Isa - the lecturer - that is more than the cliche commitment-phobic middle-aged man. I honestly got the impression that Isa did not see that he was behaving badly. He just did what he did. The older woman sees this and plays along. Despite physical submission we don't feel she is any real danger. By contrast, the younger woman seems to be signing on for life imprisonment.

The strength of the film lies in the uncompromising honesty of every aspect of the production. The performances are quiet and authentic rather than histrionic. The dialogue and orchestral score are spare. The photography is austere, forcing us to concentrate on the internal life of the characters, thanks to static tableaux and intrusive close-ups. But most importantly, in the age of the disposable romantic-comedy or the crass melodrama, Ceylan dares to be brutally honest about the reality of modern relationships.

CLIMATES/IKLIMLER played Cannes, where it won the FIPRESCI prize, and Toronto 2006. It was released in Turkey, the US, Norway and Greece in 2006 and is currently playing in France and the UK. It opens in Austria on March 23rd nd in Italy on May 4th.

CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUNDS OF ISTANBUL

CROSSING THE BRIDGE aims to do two things. First, it wants to show us the range of music being played in the vibrant Turkish music scene. Second, it wants to use this insight as a spring-board to a deeper discussion about Turkish culture and politics. Indeed, it starts off with a quotation from Confucius: "To understand a place you must know the music made there."

Where the film succeeds beyong all expectation is in showcasing the best of Turkish music. This is made possible by German prog-rock guitarist Alexander Hacke's close links with the musical community in Istanbul. This allows him to simply show up with a whole bunch of microphones and record what is happening. We go from progressive rock to hip-hop to traditional Romany and Kurdish music and back again.

We start of with Turkish prog rock played by Baba Zula and Orient Expressions. The music is great, rhythem-led, and sounds rather like the sort of stuff being put out by Sebastian Rochford's jazz fusion outfit, Polar Bear. Next, we move on to Istanbul's grunge rock scene, with bands Duman and Replikas. After that, we move on to the grand-daddy of Turkish rock - Erkin Koray - and lots of hysterical vintage footage of Erkin going Hendrix. Next, on to the hip-hop scene. For me, the music really kicked into gear when we got to the traditional Romany music from Western Turkey, using clarinets and ouds. The musicians Selim Sesler and Brenna MacCrimmon are outstandingly talented and it is a strength of the film that thanks to Alexander Hacke's friendship with Selim, we get a glimpse of traditional Romany jam sessions and weddings. Pure musical bliss.

We head back to Istanbul to meet street musician Siyasiyabend, who criticises people like Erkin Koray for romaticising the street. As one of his colleagues says, when you lay your head on the road to sleep at night you know that concrete is just concrete, nothing more nothing less. And then onto a series of rather poor eighties throw-backs in the shape of movie stars Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu.

Clearly this movie is not for people who have no interest in world music. And, to the extent that the film is basically a series of jam sessions, whether you'll enjoy the film will depend on how much you like each of the acts. While the movie does give us brief glimpses into the socio-politics of Turkey, the comments are never more than superficial and anyone coming to this purely for the politics will be sorely disappointed.

Having said all that, what social commentary there is in the film is rather cheering. In an age of trumped-up inter-civilisational tension, it is nice to know that angry teenagers are singing whiny rubbish lyrics the world over. It is great to see the Americanised Ali G type claiming that he is "keeping it real" despite the fact that he has just spent 15 million lire on rims for his car. I love the fact that we can have flash chavs in Turkey as well as Staines. And, in a rare success for the European Union, it is cool to see that Kurdish musicians now have the right to sing in their own language again.

CROSSING THE BRIDGE premiered at Cannes 2005 and went on release in France, Germany and Austria last summer. It is on limited release in the UK but there is no scheduled release date for the US.