Grain - Weizen

To some extent, GRAIN is a messy film of two halves. The first takes place in a futuristic factory where everything is manufactured, even the air. The Professor (Jean-Marc Barr) discovers that the person who can enlighten him the most (Ermin Bravo) has gone AWOL into the wilderness, and cannot be contacted. The Professor goes after him, with the help of youngster Andrei (Grigory Dobrygin), and guide Alice /Cristina Fluter). This covers roughly the first hour of the film, making trenchant points about the ways in which humanity has conspired to ruin the soil and the atmosphere, to such an extent that most of its is now synthetic.

The second half of the time, set in the wilderness, has the Professor encountering his missing colleague, but discovering a more important lesson about the relationship between humanity and the soil. The colleague takes him on a tour of the wilderness, and into his private lair, where some soil unaffected by the prevailing acid rain is preserved. The colleague resolves to take it out and use it for growing new natural things. Meanwhile the Professor discovers things about himself through dreams such as witnessing a burning bush, and being taken to a small area of land where the soil yields fresh produce. The movie ends with a pretty explicit exhortation to everyone - including the professor - to avoid complacency and contribute towards restoring the relationship between humanity and the soil by digging deep and discovering new soil and new plants, especially the wheat plant, which contains within its seeds the entire relationship between the soil and humanity.

There are distinct echoes of Kaplanoğlu's earlier meditations on similar subjects in the familiar trilogy (MILK, HONEY, EGG) but here the message is more insistently expressed through dialogue between the Professor and his colleague, plus a final image of the Professor discovering wheat seeds in a fertile piece of land in the wilderness.

The film's style is characteristic Kaplanoğlu, a slowly burning narrative with long silent patches, where all we can hear are the birds or the rustle of the characters moving around. We are invited to focus on the land - or lack of it in the first half - and how humanity has destroyed it with buildings now in a state of disrepair. This strategy makes the ending all the more powerful, as the Professor moves out of his hidey-hole on to the land, draws a circular shape (containing the fertile area) and digs out some wheat seeds.

As usual, some filmgoers might be bored with the slow style and occasional clunky lines, but there's no doubting Kaplanoğlu's sense of ideological purpose, which comes fully to the fore as the narrative develops. Definitely a film to watch again for its subtleties, although perhaps viewers have to know something about the Qu'ran to appreciate it fully.

To define it as a remarkable film, many reasons can be used. The most important is the state of soul after its final credits. A film about life and fundamental options. A film about faith and about goodness. About questions and about the high price of answers. A film about the return and the way and the bag of grains , a burning tree reminding the meet between God and Moses, the voice of child in night and his invitation to dinner and, not the last, the powerful memories about "Stalker" by Andrei Tarkovski. Sure, I admit, the temptation , before see the movie, is the names of Semih Kapanoglu and Jean- Marc Bar . i do not know if it is a masterpiece. But , for me, it is not far by this definition. So, only "Bugday".

The director Semih Kaplanoglu has a succesful cinema discography. His last film "Grain" is raising his cinematographic level to top!

Grain presents an excellent visual narration making feel the taste of Bela Tar, Andrei Tarkovsky, Pawel Pawlikowsky or Alfonso Cuaron movies. Also, by the context of dark storytelling and using mystic-religious references to tell a distopic story, the movie evokes Darren Aronofsky movies. However, these tastes signify only evoking materials; Kaplanoglu has achieved a genuine and peculiar cinema langue containing authentic, local and oriental images and narratives some of which refer to Kur'an.

Only disturbing content of movie, especially for me, Grain present an open-ended expression on the contradiction/combination of science and spiritual-religious beliefs within the story of an apocalyptic future where people strive against scarsity and poverty. Hence, some of possible interpretations can radically change main suggestions of the movie and many viewers (like me) could dislike some of these conclusions. The director's ideo-political position (close to actual political power in Turkey) may give some clues on what he has tried to express by his movie but, looking for the meaning out of this movie could lead us to false notions.

Despite this, I loved this movie very very much.

I am certainly very impressed and touched by every second of Grain. Tremendous attribution to all very good human examples from Prophet Moses to Porphet Muhammed (sav) also great thinkers like Yunus,and numerous others whom tried to understand and reminded us human journey's limitations & efficient use need. Andrei is obviously Andrei Tarkovsky in some point their road seperated because their search needs were different.

Breath or Grain you may read this as spirit or material. Both are not different as western world scholars thought us. There is no borders between them and they grow together.

Everything in the film is happening right now. We are all witnessing to Middle East, Latin America, some Asian countries divisions and how their resources stolen by some countries. They are not right but at the moment they have the power. But with this power also they are destroying themselves.

Semih Kaplanoglu gave an examle during one of his interviews; "While people are starving in Sudan, there are grains grown to sell to Europe in fertile soil covered with electric tails one or two steps away." The film goes out of the way of the world's question, how we can cure the present disorder. Disorders; desire for constant and continuous growth. We can compare the problem to cancer,which wants to grow up without stopping; Until it is impossible to grow constantly with limited resources, people break down the habitat they live on, and eventually environmental disasters and hunger that have not been seen throughout history have become prominent.

If you do not know much about this part of the world, its heritage and culture it will be difficult to understand but watch this film and then you can read about more to understand it. You will surely enjoy more in time by widening your harizon.

I love this film with all my heart. Much better than expected.. Good acting and good camera.. The only real question is how many awards will this win. See this film, it's utterly incredible. you'll see how much better it becomes. The technical side of the movie is practically flawless.It was a good movie!