What does the world look like through the eyes of young teenagers living in a remote village in modern Turkey?
For Ömer, a boy of about 14, life is lived under the oppressive rule of a boorish, overbearing father. One old lady’s comment on the male of the species is that they start of so sweetly as young boys, but as soon as they marry they change, and to hell with the lot of them. This certainly rings true in Ömer’s experience, and it’s not just women and children who fall under paternal domination; men of any age who still have a father living are under the thumb and are treated like naughty children.
Yakup too is somewhat disillusioned by his father and in his outrage he joins his friend Omer in his patricidal fantasies. Yakup has a crush on what we must all agree is a very pretty, young school teacher. He drools over her in class and loses his place on the page she tells him to read; he even has dreams about marrying her! One day he comes across his religious father stealing a long, furtive, lascivious peep through the teacher’s bedroom window, and is totally disillusioned.
Then there’s young Yildiz. She has started to grow up, to notice things, and is somewhat startled by life. She hears strange noises from her parents’ bedroom and eventually links them to scenes of mating donkeys and dogs that she comes across when she’s out with her friends.
It’s a longish, slow film, but excellently acted and directed. The landscape is a star in its own right, with the village set high on a mountain that overlooks a huge lake (Lake Van?). The action is structured around the set times of Islamic prayer, and perhaps there is some intentionality in suggesting a juxtaposing of the claims of the faith with loyalty to the modern secular state and modern ways.
Life is oppressive, but the delights of adolescence triumph at times. The childhood that the three teenagers are starting to leave behind them was in many ways idyllic and carefree, but I was left wondering if the three friends were destined to grow into their parents, or would the pretty, young teacher give them enough of a glimpse of another life to challenge them to look for something else.
