Turtles Can Fly | Review

Iranian production should be among top candidates for best foreign picture of the year.

Such as the slums of Calcutta and the impoverished realities found in Rio, the world has turned a blind eye on them and they are the part of the news reports that never get shown. Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s “scaled-down” portrait of the victims of war is a masterful piece which will force onlookers to rationalize with the inexplicable. Beginning with a shot that sees a small pair of bare feet leap off the rocky edge – this image and plenty of other moments of misery foreshadows the darkest moments in individual sufferance at an age where riding one’s bike should be the only priority and concern. Scavenging for life and calling abandoned military tanks their homes, these masses of Kurdish children living along the border of Iran and Iraq fiend for themselves, collecting live mines as if they were picking berries.

Beautifully filmed, Turtles Can Fly is an affecting, heart-wrenching and an awfully demoralizing experience – it’s not only difficult to imagine or comprehend the suffering, but it is even harder to watch a child’s will or ability to survive without family and without hope under conditions of chaos, extreme poverty and moral decay. In the neorealist tradition, this features non-actors in the roles of the victims, – unfortunately the faces that Ghobadi features in this film aren’t from national theatres or commercial audition regulars, the children featured in the film were actual victims of the war themselves – it becomes apparent not only emotional scars visible in their desperate faces but by the physical wounds as in some who are displayed with their ripped bodies and missing limbs. Ghobadi’s passes on his disheartening message about the war through two perspectives. The character of Kak Satellite, – the village leader who ability at pulling in television signals from the sky allows for him to be the most prosperous of all the children and his character becomes an example of how hope can find itself in the darkest holes of a ravaged landscape. The other p.o.v is shared with an example of how hope is crushed by the savagery of war – not even the victim’s extremely brave, prophetic brother can carry the heavy burden she endures – this little girl’s hunting stare describes what a vacant, damaged and lifeless soul looks like.

Amongst a new national cinema with Italian Neorealist roots, the San Sebastian Golden Shell winner pushes the real victims of war into the foreground. Such as another affecting Middle-east 2004 release in (Osama), whenever filmmakers merge the livelihoods of the innocent with the uglier side of humanity – it demands our attention and it makes for the kind of long-lasting impression that shakes the viewer to a core. With powerful imagery and powerful ideas – Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly is a commanding statement that says the true victims of war aren’t soldiers toting guns but parentless children dying from a lack of love, protection and starvation.

Rating 4.5 stars