Heavy, tedious Turkish arthouse melodrama, The Road is more interesting for its history than in and of itself. Scenarist Yilmaz Güney, an ethnic Kurd, could not film The Road because he was a political prisoner of Turkey’s military regime. Therefore, his assistant, Serif Gören, shot the film. Turkey had had a military coup in 1960 and military interventions in 1971 and 1980.
Each of a group of ethnically diverse prisoners is given a week’s furlough. Each encounters family and related issues. This is a schematic, dull film, not any sort of compelling depiction of political oppression. Turkey has given us beautiful films, among them Dervis Zaim’s Somersault in a Coffin (1996), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Kasaba (1997) and Clouds of May (1999), and Yesim Ustaoglu’s Journey to the Sun (1999). The Road does not compare with these.
On the other hand, it is somewhat better than The Wall (Duvar, 1983), a prison drama that Güney directed on his own.
This entry was posted on July 2, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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YOL (Serif Gören, 1982)
Heavy, tedious Turkish arthouse melodrama, The Road is more interesting for its history than in and of itself. Scenarist Yilmaz Güney, an ethnic Kurd, could not film The Road because he was a political prisoner of Turkey’s military regime. Therefore, his assistant, Serif Gören, shot the film. Turkey had had a military coup in 1960 and military interventions in 1971 and 1980.
Each of a group of ethnically diverse prisoners is given a week’s furlough. Each encounters family and related issues. This is a schematic, dull film, not any sort of compelling depiction of political oppression. Turkey has given us beautiful films, among them Dervis Zaim’s Somersault in a Coffin (1996), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Kasaba (1997) and Clouds of May (1999), and Yesim Ustaoglu’s Journey to the Sun (1999). The Road does not compare with these.
On the other hand, it is somewhat better than The Wall (Duvar, 1983), a prison drama that Güney directed on his own.
This entry was posted on July 2, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.