A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but, since it did win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, I was eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, the whole gimmick of using some German cities to stand in for Istanbul and Ankara just didn’t work for me at all. Afterwards, I discovered that the director was actually German and his parents were Turkish immigrants so, in this context, it made more sense. Sure, I get that shooting such a movie so critical about the government wouldn’t be possible in Turkey but I wish he picked up another location which would be more similar to Turkey like any North African country for example. It also gave me the vibe that, compared to the oppression in Turkey, German/Europe might be so much better which was rather condescending. It’s too bad because, beside this misguided approach, the rest of the movie was actually so good. Indeed, it was so complex and so fascinating and it basically asked what should be our main priorities. Ourselves, our family, our country or the rest of the world? As displayed in this movie, it was not that easy, especially if you have such limited options as it seemed to be the case in Turkey. It was quite interesting because half of the group I watched this movie with actually believed that this couple would survive all this but I was not so optimistic. At the end of the day, even if you are the most ideological person in the world, it’s almost impossible to reconcile all these interests together. I also loved the fact that their teenage daughter, even though she seemed to be bright enough, didn’t care much or at all about their whole political consciousness which was pretty much pitch-perfect. It was also touching that both parents really loved her and very often would put her as a priority above their political concerns. The danger after watching this movie is to believe that we are so ‘lucky’ compared to the poor characters in this movie. In fact, in our case, I think we have more the illusion of choice and most of our so-called ‘freedom’ is eventually spent on over-consumerism and rather meaningless social media and mainstream culture. At least, we do have a choice, we just constantly choose poorly, the fascinating characters in this movie did not have such luxury. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of the poor location choice, this movie was actually quite fascinating, no doubt about it.