Süt

Must be hard if not impossible trying to make a life for yourself as an "intellectual" as we say in my country when you come from a village in the middle of nowhere. Life is tough out there and art and artists have no place.

The director is serving us visuals left and right and I'm here for it. Those ancient ruins coming out of nowhere in the beginning, actually that entire scene with that girl that actually came to nothing and we never see her again. But most of all that snake extraction scene was so gnarly. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Is that even possible? Again towards the middle I was wondering what the whole point of that scene was, since the woman was not Yusuf's mother as I had thought and it looked completely unrelated, but the snake whisperer makes another appearance. And we have another snake, of course. And a gigantic catfish towards the end.

It's a slow movie with plenty of natural landscape, like the other ones, farm scenes, but also shabby houses and old style interior decor, but it's all familiar in a way because it's pretty much the same in my country. Same with the poverty and lack of opportunity for people living in rural areas or in small towns. Nothing much happens objectively speaking, but there's a lot going on inside the main character's head. Could be one of several things, in fact you are left to fill in a lot for yourself, without any confirmation. There's clearly a lot going through Yusuf's mind.

It was funny when he found out his mother had a private life, till I remembered Turkey had honor killings and I got a little worried for a second or two, but this movie does not go there. In fact I was thinking at the very end that the most beautiful that his mother had ever looked was through his own eyes. And maybe the girl he was describing in his poem was in fact his own mother. In an innocent, needy way of course. She had raised him by herself and it's clear he wasn't social at all. She must have been his whole universe for a long time.

It took me a long time to sit down to watch this movie, in between the first and the last of the series because I couldn't find it in a decent version. In fact I had to watch it with Spanish subs, and I'm not fluent in Spanish, let alone in reading Spanish. Thankfully the dialogue is sparse and curt. I'm a little obsessed with getting the dialogue right so I paused it often to be able to read it in Spanish, but I got it.

Stylistically speaking, SÜT (MILK) contains several of the devices commonly associated with director Semih Kaplanoğlu's work: long takes in which characters are seen to move through the frame; an absence of music or other sonic devices, save for the sounds of birds cheeping, lorries passing by on the road, or the sounds of daily life in a small town; and a concentration on the landscape at different times of the day. The story might be important, but so is the context in which it is set.

The film follows on from BAL (HONEY) - actually released two years after SÜT - by focusing on the adolescent Yusuf (Melih Selcuk) and his mother Zehra (Başak Köklükaya). They have now moved from the Black Sea to Tire in the west of the country, and eke out an existence by keeping a small herd of cattle and selling the milk to local people. This is a precarious life at best; when Yusuf fails to show up at a local apartment block with the daily deliveries, the customers turn away from him. Zehra seeks solace in the arms of the local station-master (Şerif Erol), which increases Yusuf's sense of alienation from his world.

Thematically speaking SÜT examines a world undergoing significant change: the rural way of life is being threatened by unrestricted urban development, with apartment blocks springing up all around Yusuf's town. Whereas once everyone would have been farmers, now they find gainful employment on the building-site. This might provide a stable source of income, but comes at a price: human beings are transformed into automata, with little time to reflect on the world. We see Yusuf's friend Erol (Orçun Kökşal) bemoaning the lack of opportunity to write poetry due to the exigencies of his job.

Yet it seems that the world has no place for poets any more. Yusuf's teacher Ali (Rıza Akın) - who was shown trying to teach writing to the young Yusuf in BAL - spends most of his days in the local bar drinking beer and reading newspapers, with neither the time nor the inclination to comment on his protegé's poetic efforts. Although Yusuf experiences the thrill of seeing his efforts in print, they do not help him to improve his existence. Kaplanoğlu underlines the sterility of his life by showing him sat at a typewriter in a darkened room next to a barred window - the classic prison-image.

In his daily life, Yusuf has an ambivalent relationship to his antique motor-cycle. While providing him and his mother with their sole mode of transport - so that they can sell their produce in the center of town - Yusuf is clearly ill-at-ease while driving it. In one sequence he falls off spectacularly, and is shown lying on the ground, foam trickling from the side of his mouth. Like his late father (in BAL) he is prone to epileptic fits. Contemporary societies have little or no use for such people; hence it is significant that no one comes to his aid, and he has to make his own way home-wards.

SÜT is perhaps more overtly critical of contemporary Turkish society than BAL, but nonetheless director Kaplanoğlu emphasizes the importance of human beings' relationship to the natural world around them. Selling milk - the natural produce of farm animals - helps to sustain that bond, while writing poetry offers an opportunity for individuals to reflect ontologically on their lives. It is a tribute to Yusuf's strength of character that he continues in both vocations, despite his reversals.

It's hard for a viewer who's used to watching James Bond films to get into Süt. This is the second film of the "Yusuf Trilogy" written and directed by the talented Turkish director Yusuf Kaplanoglu and it precedes Yumurta, so you know what you're up to. Long shots, very little camera motion a very simple actual story, which doesn't have an obvious, Hollywood-like plot twist or ending.

On the other hand, it includes a very long story about the social change the "location" is going through and also a very long story about the change the main character has to face. This long story part is not told through any means of action of course, because basically everybody knows what a teenager has to go through. That part is left to the viewer, to be gained as impressions from the moving paintings of Kaplanoglu's film.

Süt is simply close to film as an art form. Multi-layered, pure, not filled with unnecessary dialogs. Sometimes an image on the background, sometimes an animal or sometimes even a bright light carries the flow of ideas. Viewer needs to think about it, read about it, maybe see it once more and after all these steps, may still like or dislike the film. That's a personal taste nobody can change in the end but this whole process is worth the effort.

Süt was -for me- more difficult to get into than Yumurta. Basak Koklukaya is close to perfect but Melih Selcuk is I think, not really up to the job he has in his hands. The third film of the trilogy will be Bal and will paint the childhood of Yusuf.

It seems as if the director applies some known rules to make an award winning movie. Some of the scenes are interesting but the total movie is not enough to give a good taste. It is not giving an idea, the analysis of the tredition is coarse. There isn't enough detail to enjoy slow scenes. Still better than the Egg. And finally watching Basak Koklukaya is a ritual. She is gorgeous.

Second film in the Egg-Milk-Honey trilogy, whose main theme is the relationship between mother and son on the background of changing Turkish society, the generational and rural-urban conflicts. The symbolism of the film is mind-motivating but not incomprehensible, the camera is exquisite and sound underscores the atmosphere of the film. Süt is probably cinematographically more mature than Yumurta. Semih Kaplanoglu proves again that he is a very promising director with a defined auteur style. Basak Koklukaya gives a standard performance while the young actor, Melih Selcuk, presents a very good and for his debut film a mature screen presence - another big talent found by Kaplanoglu (Johnnie To, member of the 65th Venice Film Festival jury, listed Selcuk as one of his two main candidates for the best actor award). After watching Süt, the feeling that was steadily growing inside will not let you rest and the film will continue to resonate inside of your soul for days to come. Selected for the 65th Venice Film Festival Main Competition as the first Turkish film in 17 years, this film is yet another proof of how long a way Turkish cinema has walked from merely 15 years ago until now and how many promising Turkish artists the future might uncover for us.