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Turkish Master Yilmaz Güney Makes a Home at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Winner of the 1982 Palme d’Or by proxy for Yol (he was imprisoned during production and gave detailed directions to Şerif Gören, the ‘official’ director, on how to make the film), Güney is the most influential Turkish filmmaker in the country’s history, and, frankly, still probably the greatest of them all (Ceylan may well surpass him, though, especially if he makes any more films on the plane as Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, but that’s a debate for another time and place).
Ask a random sampling of cinephiles – let’s even make a rule that they must be well-researched in and fanatic about European cinema – to name a significant Turkish filmmaker, living or dead, and by far the most common answer will be Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Runners-up will be 2010 Golden Bear-winner Semih Kaplanoğlu and German filmmaker Fatih Akin (he’s of Turkish descent), and way down at a very distant fourth place will be a man by the name of Yilmaz Güney. Winner of the 1982 Palme d’Or by proxy for Yol (he was imprisoned during production and gave detailed directions to Şerif Gören, the ‘official’ director, on how to make the film), Güney is the most influential Turkish filmmaker in the country’s history, and, frankly, still probably the greatest of them all (Ceylan may well surpass him, though, especially if he makes any more films on the plane as Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, but that’s a debate for another time and place).
Helping to rectify this injustice of a behemoth forgotten, Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox will screen an eight-film retrospective comprising Güney’s most important, influential, and best films, to run from January 26 to February 5. The centerpiece of this programme will undoubtedly be the aforementioned Yol, which TIFF acknowledges by inviting Ercument Akman (editor of Turkish Cinema Newletter) as a guest speaker to introduce the film’s screening on January 28, when he will provide a background on Turkish cinema, Güney’s significance and influences, and the film’s complicated production method.
Exemplifying an unfortunately common motif in his body of work, Yol is one of three films in the retrospective to not be solely directed by Güney (the other two are The Herd (January 27) and The Poor Ones (January 29)). In a way, it would actually make a brilliant double bill with Jafar Panahi’s 2011 shackled doc This is Not a Film, as both films were made while the filmmakers were imprisoned (Güney was arrested for shooting the public prosecutor of the Yumurtalık district to death, while Panahi was under house arrest for, well, being a filmmaker [AKA “the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security”), and reflect the zealotry, bigotry, and misogyny of their respective oppressive societies and governments.
The gist of Yol‘s plot is fairly simple, even a tad schematic: five Kurdish prisoners are granted a week-long leave of absence from a Turkish prison, and we follow each of their journeys into their pasts, right down to their bitter ends. And in case that last point is understated, let it be reiterated: this is a bleak, wrenching, cruel, and bitter portrayal of humanity as told by a voice that views freedom and compassion as concepts that are utterly alien to the Turkish experience of the early 80s. Saying so much about the impossibility of freedom in the face of tradition (there is no real question that the women here are worse off than the men in jail), it’s a handsomely-made, melodramatic, and bombastically sentimental production, almost every scene effectively knocking the air out of the viewer before it is able to yield to the next.
And for all of its exemplary qualities (the writing, pacing (edited by Güney himself upon escaping prison), and the photography – especially the scenery, virtually running through the full range of seasons over the course of a week as the quintet disperses across Turkey’s multifarious geography), it retains a charming naïveté, carrying an aesthetic that could be described as a cross between a soap opera and a children’s movie. This is essentially problematic, though, since, as the canonical specimen that is most used to sample Güney’s body of work, it leaves us in the provocative position of not really being able to grasp the auteurist staples and stylings of e.g. his formal tendencies or directorial quirks. What in here, aside from the script, is really ‘Güney’? The existence of such a question is precisely why this retrospective is totally invaluable.
The Way Home: The Films of Turkish Master Yilmaz Güney begins Thursday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
