Sibel

The actress and character are so badass you are left wondering why nobody else around sees that. That's a big part of the irony of this film. Aside from that I cared so deeply for these characters, great direction and storytelling. It was a thrilling journey. I could imagine this being a best foreign film nominee, it was that good!

This film reminded me of Mustang, another award-winning movie about the oppression of women and other evils of the Turkish countryside. Although the facts regarding this issue is true, cinematic representation of these facts requires literal artistry and Sibel is a total failure in this case.

Technical details aside (dialogues are badly written, acting of the amateurs are slightly better than terrible, while some villagers have strong rural accent, some others speak perfect Istanbul Turkish etc.), the movie has serious flaws from the beginning to the end. The movie aims to depict the condition of women in Turkish countryside, and problematizes the social mechanisms within. However, these social mechanisms are mainly women-borne, so as to say that "a woman is a wolf to other women."

This is the exact point this movie totally fails. Their "goal" for shooting this movie appears to be singling out their "fellows" in these rural communities (those who have potential to be bourgeois, though stuck in the countryside) and motivate them to fight back. Against whom? Against the oppressive women around them, instead of building a feminist consciousness and solidarity altogether.

Apparently this is all because the directors' strong bourgeois codes do not let them get into (and grasp the essence of) the real rural life, so they had no chance but to represent what they already had on their minds about it.

Here is a wonderful, sober little tale of a young girl, Sibel, but not just any young girl. A survivor of segregation. A fond and brave being, full of sensibility and with a compassionate heart that fights for her own voice - the only one that speaks the truth, the only one the world has tried to keep from our befuddled senses. Somewhat introduced as a lost and wild soul, she turns out to be the most dedicated spirited human in her land. Damla Sönmez captures us from start to finish, in a movie that flows through its story in a breath of an absolute and beautiful realism.

This is a fine film, solidly acted across the board, which introduces us to village life in Turkey's northern mountains. Shots of wilderness and village settings are great and, while not that much actually happens, the plot and the main character's plight, continue to grip the viewer throughout.

What's different here is the extraordinary Sibel, mute because of a childhood illness, she communicates via an ancient whistling language (originally evolved to allow farmers to 'talk' over very long distances) now spoken and understood by only a few. Because of her disability, she is treated somewhere between a child, not required to cover her head (presumably because no man will want her) and a man, allowed to go freely around the village, fields and forest, carrying her rifle. Her attitudes are interesting - she fearlessly takes on an unknown male assailant, but makes no resistance when the older women of the village attack her. Even more interesting (and producing perhaps the best performance of the film) is the attitude of her conflicted father, the local mayor. Sibel provides him with the domestic support, cooking and cleaning, that any widower expects of his daughter in this society, but also with the companionship usually provided by a son as the two go hunting together and he declares with pride that she knows the forest better than any local man. At some deeper level he understands that not only disabled people are abused by this culture, but, through Sibel, that women are too. Even in his position of power though, he is unable to change anything.

The script is a bit less reliable - for example it's not believable that the prissy younger sister would have the courage, let alone the skills required to track Sibel into the deep forest undetected. But the upbeat ending is fine. This is not victim-feminism, but presents a character able, despite a wobble or two, to function well despite all the odds stacked against her by both her disability and the chauvinist society she lives in.

In a rural Turkish environment, the film describes for a few days a young mute woman (Sibel) who is rejected by an inhospitable and rough village community, and confronted with customs of another time. The overall result is a little bland: 5/6 of 10.