On the message board about this movie is a thread headed by the question, "Am I the only one who thinks this movie sucks?" I almost answered it before I finished watching the movie, but I decided to wait it out and see if it improved, and it did.
My problem wasn't with the slow, lyrical pace of the movie (I actually loved that), the numerous gut-wrenching near-misses, the section titles that gave away key plot points before they happened, or all the loose ends and questions left unanswered when the credits rolled. I like movies that don't follow the Hollywood blockbuster formula, and the farther they depart from the formula the better I usually like them. But I pretty much have to care about somebody in a movie to care about the movie, and I just didn't care about a single one of these characters until very near the end.
With very few exceptions, my enjoyment of any movie depends on how deeply I get involved with the characters in it, and I just wasn't getting involved with these. The old man and both young women were so shallow, selfish, and stupid that all I wanted was never to have to see any of them again, and that didn't change at all in the course of the movie. To me, they were just three obnoxious, uninteresting losers who never learned from their mistakes. (A selfish, mean-spirited old man crying does not fill me with sympathy. It reminds me too much of somebody I know.)
The young man and the prostitute were a little better than the other three, only because they weren't selfish and obnoxious; but they were nearly as shallow, not much realer to me as human beings than the others were. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't care much about them either.
So, around 20 minutes from the end, when the old man pulled his put-the-book-down-slowly-and-weep-into-the-camera shtick, I was ready to write on that message board, "You're right—this movie sucks!" But immediately after that, Hanna Schygulla (I'd forgotten she even existed) rose slowly and gracefully out of the muck and brought a flesh-and-blood human being to life in this movie at last.
Her radiant but deeply grounded performance almost made the whole movie worthwhile, made even some of the other characters seem not so bad after all. Once her character fully appeared, even her welcoming the still-obnoxious Ayten into her life didn't ruin it for me, nor did her prompting Nejat to run off pathetically after his self-pitying jerk of a father. Hanna Schygulla saved this movie from tedium and transformed it into something worth watching—all by herself.
For her performance, and for the beautifully poetic pace of this movie, I give it several more stars than I would have if I'd stopped watching it 20 minutes before the end.
My problem wasn't with the slow, lyrical pace of the movie (I actually loved that), the numerous gut-wrenching near-misses, the section titles that gave away key plot points before they happened, or all the loose ends and questions left unanswered when the credits rolled. I like movies that don't follow the Hollywood blockbuster formula, and the farther they depart from the formula the better I usually like them. But I pretty much have to care about somebody in a movie to care about the movie, and I just didn't care about a single one of these characters until very near the end.
With very few exceptions, my enjoyment of any movie depends on how deeply I get involved with the characters in it, and I just wasn't getting involved with these. The old man and both young women were so shallow, selfish, and stupid that all I wanted was never to have to see any of them again, and that didn't change at all in the course of the movie. To me, they were just three obnoxious, uninteresting losers who never learned from their mistakes. (A selfish, mean-spirited old man crying does not fill me with sympathy. It reminds me too much of somebody I know.)
The young man and the prostitute were a little better than the other three, only because they weren't selfish and obnoxious; but they were nearly as shallow, not much realer to me as human beings than the others were. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't care much about them either.
So, around 20 minutes from the end, when the old man pulled his put-the-book-down-slowly-and-weep-into-the-camera shtick, I was ready to write on that message board, "You're right—this movie sucks!" But immediately after that, Hanna Schygulla (I'd forgotten she even existed) rose slowly and gracefully out of the muck and brought a flesh-and-blood human being to life in this movie at last.
Her radiant but deeply grounded performance almost made the whole movie worthwhile, made even some of the other characters seem not so bad after all. Once her character fully appeared, even her welcoming the still-obnoxious Ayten into her life didn't ruin it for me, nor did her prompting Nejat to run off pathetically after his self-pitying jerk of a father. Hanna Schygulla saved this movie from tedium and transformed it into something worth watching—all by herself.
For her performance, and for the beautifully poetic pace of this movie, I give it several more stars than I would have if I'd stopped watching it 20 minutes before the end.