Le brouillard c’est l’incertitude. Un brouillard qu’on ne peut saisir dans ses mains ou voir de ses yeux. Un brouillard qui peut appréhender notre bonheur, notre douleur, nos craintes et nos contraintes et qui enveloppe les relations humaines. Un brouillard qui flotte sur une famille, une société et une époque. Comme disait Victor-Hugo « telles les pierres que le volcan projette, le peuple est projeté » dans une période d’incertitude. Un brouillard qui a pris la vie de 5000 hommes en quatre ans. Le but de ce film est de rappeler et de comprendre quelque chose qui a disparu à jamais de la vie de notre pays et de nos propres existences. Zülfü Livaneli
Cannes festival, quinzaine des réalisateurs 1989 http://www.quinzaine-realisateurs.com/qz_film/sis/
translation: Mist is uncertainty. A mist which cannot be grasped with the hand or seen with the eye. A mist which makes us dread our happiness, our pain, our fears, our obligations and which envelops human relationships. A mist hanging over a family, a society and an era. As stated by Victor Hugo “similar to stones discharged by a volcano, the people are discharged” in an era of uncertainty. A mist which has taken the lives of 5000 people within four years. The aim of this film is to remember this and understand something which is lost and gone forever from life in our country and our own existence. (Zülfü Livaneli)
getting rid of leftist books
visit to the shanty town
Ali Fırat picks up a hitchhiker in a rest-rooom
Elia Kazan on the left
Rutkay Aziz as Ali Fırat
a visit to his old skipper-friend
penultimate scene in an Ottoman cemetery
Bosphorus bridge view, used for the film’s poster
the janitor Seyit Efendi and Erol
final line of the film
synopsis, spoilers
The film begins with a b/w prequel on 27 May 1960, during the military coup. The patriarch, a Colonel, his two sons, one left wing (about to emigrate to France) and the other, Ali, right wing, with two little sons. Flash forward to 1978, the times of political murders leading to the 1980 putsch. The right wing son (or conservative, patriotic – he’s magisterially played by Rutkay Aziz whose speech at Tarık Akan’s funeral ceremony I’ve just watched on youtube) is now a retired judge, a widower, and working as a lawyer. Of his two sons, one has turned left wing, the other right wing. (It’s left unclear how much he’s involved. Both belong to underground organizations, but you never see them in action, just conspirators whispering in the nightly streets.)
Right at the beginning of the film, the leftist son is shot in his apartment he shared with his right-wing brother. The press starts a campaign claiming the right-wing son as the murderer. During the entire film the father is trying to hide his son from the police and his assassins in various hide-outs. He meets his dead son’s girlfriend (who has trouble destroying the leftist books), a crazed kid in prison, arrested for a series of murders of leftist writers, politician etc., he visits the kid’s family living in a cabin below the ancient City Walls, he visits a den where a group of dervishes perform a rhythmic chant, he picks up another leftist hitchhiker who’s being hunted down and who passes his flu virus onto Ali Fırat. And a skipper-fisherman whom he acquitted as a judge in 1960.
In between his journeys he returns three times to his mistress – who ultimately refuses to help – and to his patriarch father, the retired colonel, who demands to see his grandson and who repeatedly claims that everything can be easily solved by hanging 200, later 500, men on Taksim Square.
The film is ultimately about the father’s quest for his son´s salvation, and his gradual realization that there’s something foul going on in the Republic of Turkey. This is an international production, even Elia Kazan (born in Istanbul, also a supporter of Yılmaz Güney) participated.
Towards the end of the film, one devastating scene follows another. Ali Fırat phones his father who by then has read in the newspaper that Erol killed Murat. The father shouts at Ali Fırat and slams down the receiver. Does the Colonel believe the newspaper story? Does he really condemn Ali for trying to save Erol from the police?
P.S. I now think in this foggy climate mistrust and poison, it is possible that a father – temporarily – and a grandfather could have believed that Erol killed Murat, and that Erol was heavily involved with a right-wing organization.
cast
Rutkay Aziz – Ali Fırat
his two sons
Uğur Polat – Erol
Fikret Kuşkan – Murat (the elder brother, murdered in the beginning)
Aslı Altan – İdil, Murat’s fiancée
Sevtap Parman – Suzan (Ali Fırat’s mistress)
Aytaç Yörükaslan – the skipper Osman Suzer
Menderes Samancılar – the janitor Seyit Efendi
Ülkü Tamer – the District Attourney, a friend of Ali
Eray Özbal ?
– Hüseyin Altın, the false suspect
Kenan Pars ?
Erdal Özyağcılar – Muhtar ?
Oğuz Fırıldak – the hitchhiker ?
and as guest Elia Kazan – the old man playing tavla in the café
(who in the screenshot is about to whisper something into Ali Fırat´s ear, but we don´t hear what he says.)
The film is available in low quality VCD format, English fan subtitles exist.
serdar0024 