Çogunluk

Seren Yüce is a young Turkish director who deserves credit for dealing with the situation of the most ordinary and unglamorous of characters. Mertkan (Bartu Küçükçağlayan) is a paunchy, unambitious, bored 21-year-old who lives with his mother Nazan (Nihal G. Koldas) and father Kemal (Settar Tanriogen). His father is the macho, aggressive owner of a construction company, for whom Mertkan is little more than an errand boy. His older brother is married and lives on his own and is therefore, in Mertkan's eyes, free. Mertkan is in thrall to his dad. His mother is disappointed in him and her husband, whom she calls "insensitive." We see in an opening sequence that Mertkan as a young boy was unthinkingly abusive to their housemaid, and even then he was psychologically bullied by his tyrannical father. The family's life isn't luxurious, but they don't suffer either, and when there's a problem, dad's money and influence can normally fix it. Mertkan drives a late-model SUV. He hangs out with pals, all with gelled hair, whose idea of a good time is to drink tea in the mall, scarf hamburgers, or drive around quaffing beer.

Unfortunately the film seems as unmotivated and listless as its protagonist, and while it has realistic and occasionally humorous moments, it utterly lacks flair or the ability to make its scenes pop.

Into Mertkan's demeaning, dull and senseless existence as an homme moyen sensuel, spineless version, comes Gül (Esme Madra), a young, slim, darkly pretty Kurdish woman (though the word "Kurdish" is never spoken) who works in the fast-food joint where Mertkan bolts hamburgers to assuage his humiliations from his father. She begins to show interest in Mertkan and since he has nothing better to do, he goes along. If he's not a virgin at least he may not have had sex for free before, with kissing. This seems as much as is going to happen to stir things up, and writer-director Yüce's main point seems to be highlighting the ways in which bourgeois prejudices plug into the Turkish-Kurdish split. The prejudices are shared by Merkan's mall rat pal Ersan (Ilhan Hacifazlioglu), who refers to Gül as a "gypsy," which is either slang for "slut" or a Turkish code word for "Kurd." In fact these subtleties are hard to judge by an outsider, and a Turkish viewer of the film has questioned the casting of Gül saying the actress speaks Turkish with too perfect an Istanbul accent to have come not so long ago from Van, as designated in the story. Given the fact that she's studying sociology at a good university, the viewer also questioned Gül's telling Mertkan her greatest dream (he can think of none himself) is to find a handsome man and marry him.

This seems not so surprising: Gül is away from her family, and short on money. The fast-food job is necessary to pay for school and her digs are humble and shared. Gül escaped from a suffocating, traditional home life and she needs some security. She's not unaware that Mertkan has money in his pocket. Marriage could indeed be high on her list of priorities, even though it means risking entrapment in a situation that will not allow her to use her education to full advantage.

After Martkan brings Gül home for dinner (which at least he has the courage to do), Kemal very quickly tells him to dump her. People from Van are communists, he says, and this woman represents the people who want to break up the country. Gül encourages Mertkan to become an architect, but Kemel wants him to serve in the army and to hell with education. This is Mertkan's chance to show some cojones. But will he? Unfortunately Yüce has no excitement up his sleeve, though from scene to scene he keeps it realistic, and sometimes slightly funny.

Yüce has been assistant director on films like Akin's Edge of Heaven, but Akin's brilliance and ambition have not worn off on him. However, the casting is good. Despite his schlubby appearance and lack of energy, as Mertkan Bartu Küçükçağlayan manages to be somebody you can identify with, and the other three principals are quite real. Yüce just needed to write a script that made something more telling happen. Majority doesn't make sufficient dramatic use of its issues and conflicts. But the director still deserves credit for looking closely at ordinariness, the life of the "majority."

Yüce's first feature, Majority/Çoğunluk won a number of awards in Turkey and the Lion of the Future prize at Venice. It was also shown at Thessaloniki and Rotterdam. Seen and reviewed as part of New Directors/New Films, the series jointly presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York from March 22 through April 3, 2011.

Excellent story, perfectly scripted and beautifully shot! An exciting directorial debut from young Seren Yuce whom the Turkish cinephile would mostly recall with his assistance director duties in various acclaimed movies such as "Takva" of Oner Kiziltan and "Auf der Anderen Seite (Yasamin Kiyisinda)" of Faith Akin. Settar Tanriogen excels once again, Bartu Kucukcaglayan brings his natural acting abilities from the stage to white screen and Esme Madra comes out of nowhere, at least for me, to shock us with her amazingly convincing acting. This movie won 3 Golden Oranges for Best Movie, Best Directing and Best Actor and it deserved each and every one of them if not more. Prior to Antalya, Seren Yuce also won "Lion of the Future" award in Venice. It is not going to surprise me if more and more awards keep coming in different cinema festivals throughout the world. It is one of the better movies made in Turkey in the recent years and not to be missed at any cost!

Mertkan is a twenty something, moderately overweight young man in Turkey, and has to deal with his boring life (which consists mainly of hanging out with friends at shopping malls) and his job working for his strict, domineering father, who runs a small construction company in Istanbul. He has a break with routine when he is involved with a Kurdish girl named Gul (the pretty Esme Madra, the best thing in the film) he met in a fast food restaurant. When his family learns of this relationship, they are naturally quite opposed to it.

Filmed with good production values, the main interest of this movie to me is that it shows life in an urban middle class milieu in Turkey. The main problem with it is that most of the characters are so unpleasant, especially the father and the son. The only exception is the Kurdish girl, but the movie never focus on her voice, nor we understand why she would be attracted to him.

Since Turkey is supposedly a fairly conservative country, I was surprised this movie includes a sexual scene, not particularly explicit for Western standards, but it does involve female frontal nudity.

The characters in this film annoyed me greatly. Their black and white line of thinking included religion/race, school (not needed) versus army (useful), owners versus workers, men versus women, etcetera. I may safely assume that this annoyance was intentional, hence a compliment to the film makers. In other words, a job well done.

I don't think this situation is typically Turkish, and could easily be moved to other countries (except The Netherlands);-)) of course).

The only problem that I am stuck with, is that the title (Majority) cannot be explained from the contents. Neither contained the announcement any clues. But that is only a minor issue, and not demeaning for the end result we saw on screen.

"Majority" is the latest internationally recognized Turkish movie as it won the Lion of the Future Award at Venice Film Festival. All of the recent renowned Turkish movies like Kosmos, Bal and 3 Monkeys seem to have been recognized because of the fact that because they are simply trying to break with the conventionality. The fact that they are honored internationally does not mean that they were big box office hits. None of these films have been able to compete with the latest comedy potboilers and blockbusting dramas. Why do you think is that? I guess it has so much to do with scanty dialogue,sparse and bare description,long takes,portent silences, highly minimalist marginal story lines, wooden acting that is just trying to be too naturalistic. The average cinema-goer on the street does not like sit and brood before such a piece of celluloid. So there is no way that these movies can be crowd-pleaser no matter how many awards they get. Seren Yüce's Çoğunluk is not different in any way. From its name, you understand that the cinema-maker takes for granted that many people do live and believe as the few larger than life (!) characters in the movie. The story may seem highly realistic and the acting may seem solid indeed but let me clarify what I mean. When the leading actor Mertkan (Bartu Küçükçağlayan) is asked by his girlfriend Gül (Esme Madra) what his wildest dream is he just answers: "You tell,first" and Gül, who studies sociology at a decent university answers : " Find a handsome man and pop the question" To hear such a naïve answer from a sociology student sounds so lame. Plus, Gül is supposed to be a girl of Kurdish extraction. In spite of her brother's heavy accent, she speaks Turkish like somebody who was born in Istanbul. You may presume that there are people like that now. There may be but it sounds weird in a movie in which a dad says ''we are all Turkish and we are all Muslims' Rest assured that only a weird father would want his son to drop school ( even if it's a distance learning program) and join the army to do his military service. We may have our views (justified or not) about different ethnicities because of the shantytowns they built up in beautiful modern cities but again rest assured not each of us think that anyone who comes from Van is a hard-line communist engaged in subversive activities. It's just not that simple. So Majority is actually the story a marginal minority,indeed!