No country for old men?

The Turkish film “Babamın Sesi” (The Voice of My Father) had its world premiere in Rotterdam (as of my copy deadline we don’t know whether it won the Tiger Award, announced on Friday, but it is seriously in the running). “Berlin Kaplanı” (The Berlin Tiger) is amusing audiences in movie theaters across the country. Its world premiere had to be, of course, screened in Berlin and it is currently playing at over 80 cinemas throughout Germany. The organizers of the Nuremberg Film Festival have announced they will be honoring screen actor Tarık Akan this year in March. An even greater honor is being given to one of Turkey’s most famous actor-filmmakers, Yılmaz Güney. The Toronto International Film Festival 2012 is currently screening a special program consisting of eight of his films, entitled “The Way Home: the Films of Turkish Master Yılmaz Güney.”

The first piece of Turkish cinema that I saw I guess doesn’t strictly count as Turkish cinema. Having had an amazing holiday in Turkey in the late 1980s, and been back to visit again the following year, when an award-winning foreign film called “Umuda Yolculuk” (Journey to Hope) was showing in the artsy Screen on the Green in Islington, I had just to travel across London to see it!

Although the screenwriter and all of the stars of the film were Turkish, it was made in Switzerland and was directed by Xavier Koller, so when it won the Oscar in 1990 for the best foreign film, the honor went to Switzerland. Despite the difficulty of trying to follow the screen action and reading subtitles at the same time, my friends and I were transfixed by the tragic story of a Turkish family illegally smuggled into Europe, seeking a better life in Switzerland.

It was my first introduction to the typical Turkish unhappy ending. Duped by fake postcards from an uncle from the village saying that life is idyllic abroad, and treated abysmally by people traffickers, the journey is really one into deep despair.

A far cry from “Not Without My Daughter,” which was screening about the same time. This too had scenes towards the end full of tension when crossing mountains, but the range was Zagros not the Alps, and the Kurds were guides, not helpless travelers -- my friends and I were thrilled when we didn’t need to look at the subtitles at one point, we realized that by insistently repeating “saat saat” Betty Mahmoudi’s guide was insisting she removed her watch.

While “Journey to Hope” actually traces an emotional diminuendo, from setting out in hope to finishing in despair, “Not Without My Daughter” makes the opposite journey. The emotional crescendo of the film comes to a pitch with the triumphant music as the heroine sees the American flag flying high above the embassy in Ankara. She is home, and we, the Western audience, can go home happy that wrongs can be righted and all is, after all, well with the world. Turkish serious films, on the other hand, tend to leave you sad.

Neither of these films feature in a stunning history and analysis, “Cinema in Turkey,” by Savaş Arslan, as they are not Turkish films; although having been partly filmed here, they were not financed, made and produced here. Arslan is an assistant professor at İstanbul’s Bahçeşehir University and his talent for analysis of how cinema reflects society makes this more than just a book for film aficionados: it is a book for all who seek to understand the changes in real Turkish society during the 20th century.

Films are made for cinema-goers, who are after all, the masses. So taste in films is a great gauge of the thinking, desires and aspirations of the masses. When accepting his award at the Cannes Film Festival, best director Nuri Bilge Ceylan dedicated it to “my lonely and beautiful country which I love passionately.” The adjectives lonely and beautiful inspired a lot of debate in the Turkish press.

Arslan could have used the adjectives from the title of an Oscar-winning film to describe Turkey: “No Country for Old Men.” The title comes from a line in the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats, so it does have a Turkey connection. But he chooses instead the phrase “the in-between country” and then develops this theme as he traces the history of Turkish cinema via transition, translation and transformation.

No history of Turkish cinema can be complete without a large section devoted to Yeşilçam -- the films made in Turkey that were regular popular entertainment and have reached a cult status. Famous now for their ironic, low-budget effects and melodramatic storylines. While celebrating the most famous examples, Arslan analyzes their attraction for the Turkish cinemagoer in the form of “hayal” -- dreaming and imagination, escape from reality -- and “özenti” -- desire to be like the other.

It was Yeşilçam that made stars of the adventurous swashbuckling Cüneyt Arkın and romantic heroine Türkan Şoray as well as the amazing singer, Zeki Müren. Yeşilçam was truly “Hollywood ala Turca” and Arslan deftly describes the connections and similarities between Yeşilçam and the Hollywood of the time, and then exposes their clashes and differences. Yeşilçam is, he demonstrates, typical of the in-between country.

But ultimately, he maintains, Turkish cinema is like Turkey both in-between and on-the-move. Turkish cinema started out with imitations, moved on to adaptations, then hybrid structures and relocations, before recently finding its own line to walk. Some of the first imitations did not try to veil the fact -- “Tarzan İstanbul’da” (Tarzan in İstanbul) -- could be nothing more than a copycat. The next development was remaking successful foreign films, adapting the characters and storyline to be set in Turkey.

Such films are still popular when shown on the television. Flick through the channels any time of the day and you are bound to light upon an adventure or a romantic story set to tug at your heart-strings, where the guys are in flares, the women have amazing hairstyles, the cars are box-like rather than aerodynamically sleek and the Bosporus is still heavily tree-lined.

But the list of the highest ticket selling Turkish films includes examples from an industry now confident enough to tell its own story in its own way, without demonstrating a desire to be like “the other”: “Eşkıya” (The Bandit), a drama about a robber, displaying the universal nature of mankind); “G.O.R.A.,” a sci-fi comedy; “Hababam Sınıfı Askerde” (Outrageous Class at the Military), a comedy in the genre of the Carry On films; “Kurtlar Vadisi Irak” (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq), an action film set in the aftermath of the US invasion in Iraq; and “Recep İvedik,” a comedy telling the funny adventures of a bully.

Perhaps the most telling point Arslan makes in relating cinema history to sociology is the change of observation point. Cinema in Ottoman society was Karagöz and Hacıvat -- the shadow puppets, where the projection was from behind the screen. In modern society and modern cinema, projection is onto the screen from in front.

Arslan recognizes that “Turkey has perhaps found its own route of modernization, staying in between the stress zone of the traditional and the modern.” Yeats seems to be wrong. Turkey, the in-between nation, may have transitioned into a country for old men (too) after all.

“Cinema in Turkey, a New Critical History,” by Savaş Arslan, published by Oxford University Press (2011) 22.50 pounds in paperback ISBN 978-019537006-5