Yol - Der Weg

Thank Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren for doing such a tremendous movie.Actings are excellent.This movie is the proof of the possibility to make great films with limited financial resources.Tarik Akan gives a perfect performance.The most I liked in the movie is the hesitation of Seyit Ali to leave Zine alone on the mount.Yol is a very well acted, edited, and directed movie.Of course it would be a great fault to forget the screen written by Yilmaz Guney.Thank people who gives us the opportunity to see "Yol" .

Five prisoners are given permission to visit their homes, and they get on their ways. Once out, we discover that we all live in a big prison, on endless roads which start and seem not to end. All roads end. Eventually. Absolutely harsh, touching, fierce, itching and scratching, disturbing movie about reality. A must see for those who have their own cliché definitons of how a "road movie" must be like.

I am completing a thesis on Turkish cinema. I have seen many Turkish films, and I think this is definitely one of the five best and certainly the best one of its' era though the underrated "Polizei" which "Yol"'s co-director Serif Goren helmed is right up there. "Yol" is amazing for many reasons. I have heard some amazing Hollywood back stories of how films like "MASH" and "Apocalypse Now" were hellish shoots. But, none of them matches what the filmmakers did on this project. "Yol" was secretly filmed, and the entire cast, which included box office icon Tarik Akan risked being blacklisted. The film was subsequently banned in Turkey until 1992, and it was not shown theatrically there until 1999. It is a scathing indictment of political and social oppression in Turkey in the early 1980s. Symbolism is used throughout the film, with birds representing freedom, horses representing virtue, and women representing oppression. Many Westerneners have labeled Yilmaz Guney, Turkey's best known director who envisioned "Yol" from his prison and then while in exile, a champion of feminist ideals. But, if one sees some of his earlier film like "Canli Hedef/Live Target" they might be in for a surprise (that film features an off-camera rape of a 10-year old girl). I like Guney's films but I agree with Serif Goren's assessment that his contributions to "Yol" were completely overlooked. Goren proved to be a capable director in his own right, and his film "10 Kadin/10 Women" is perhaps the essential film for expressing ideals which are sympathetic to feminism- a movement that I sympathize with in terms of Turkey, but am neutral towards in the West. "Yol" also deals with Kurdish suppression. One of the more poignant moments in the film comes when Halil Ergun's character comes to back to his hometown Diyarbakir (in Eastern Turkey) on the train during his prison leave. He comments how strange it is to be back home. The central theme of the film is that the oppressive elements of prison life are evident just as much on the outside. Personally, I think Turkey has made significant progress in recent years. It is a shame that except for Michael Moore, Barbara Kopple, and Tim Robbins, very few American film makers take these kinds of risks that Guney and Goren did with "Yol." In my view, the more recent Turkish film "Distant" has surpassed "Yol" as the best Turkish film ever made, but this is still a magnificent artistic achievement which can be merited as a classic in terms of international cinema.

I had no experience with Turkish or any Middle Eastern cinema before seeing this, and it made me want to see more films from this part of the world. It is essentially a travelogue with completely separate stories of several men and their encounters in various parts of Turkey during temporary furlough from a government prison. For example, one of these men is a Kurd, and another wants to take possession of his wife who disgraced him by having an affair while he was away in prison. All of these story lines remain completely separate throughout the film, and it is in this peculiar structure (different from an American movie like "Magnolia", where the stories interconnect in some way) where the film's greatest strength and weakness lie. The strength is that this is a great way for a Westerner like myself to get a good overall introduction to several aspects of Turkish society. The weakness is that the first half of the film is exceedingly difficult to follow; we never get a chance to know any of these characters, because the director constantly cuts from one storyline to the next, which caused me great confusion.

Despite the flaws, directors Goren and Guney display a true film-making talent here. This is one of the harshest movies I have ever seen, on a par with other films like "Pixote" in its unflinching brutality. These two directors have portrayed 1980s Turkey under a military dictatorship as a true hell on earth - a society stuck in the Middle Ages and obsessed with rigid, archaic, sometimes brutal Islamic customs.

With its muckraking tone, I doubt this film has ever been shown in even a comparatively free Arab country. I also imagine this will be a particularly difficult film to watch for women, as the traditional Islamic punishment for female infidelity is presented quite graphically. There are several agonizing scenes that remain frozen in my mind - especially one in which one of these prisoners must journey on foot with his wife and son through an isolated arctic wasteland. It is in scenes like this during the second half where the movie becomes truly involving. These scenes are so exceptional that it made me disappointed that this film wasn't better than it is; it had the real potential to be a masterpiece, but took too many amateurish missteps. Luckily, the missteps were not for lack of ambition.

This excellent movie shows how people in their life are the prisoner of their situation. The live in a world and society that expects them things to do and behave, and the do and behave as expected, even if they don't feel happy with it, or hurts them. They have to. This is a lesson for myself, and life as I experience it. Yhis is dramatically illustrated in the movie in the scene in which the husband is forcing his wife to go with him through the mountains, through the snow. Which has a bad ending. I remember this scene even more than 20 years after I saw it ever. This 'being prisoner of your situation' is not specific for the Turkish or any culture. I think it is typical for humans in general. Look around and you will see.