La Particule humaine

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.

The film takes its main topic from a famous story of Moses the prophet. All of the film is black-and-white. Locations are impressive, especially the old building in Anatolia. The best thing about the film is that film blends post-apocalypse and Islamic mysticism. The fictional world of film is also very good. The concept of breath used well in the film as a symbol of truth and soul. The main character, trying to make a choice between grain (all physical things) and breath. Thus, the director tells the audience about the choice process of people between the physical and metaphysical world. The film includes a perfect criticism of materialism in the background. The film bears the well stamp of the sci-fi genre. Like all other Semih Kaplanoglu movies, you can feel the taste of delicious drama in the film. Lastly, the performance of actors is excellent, they add a sincere mood to the film.

Tried to do a Sufi based movie but not able because i believe it looks ilke a good show for the eyes. The essence was not sensable. Looks ilke memorizing sentences from Sufi-Islamic literature with good camera.

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.