Yol

Yusuf (Tuncay Akça) wants after a long time, to find a woman, but at the first military roadblock, he is taken into custody having lost his papers. His journey is over as it will take several days to verify who he is.

Seyit (Tarik Akan) looking forward to his wife and son. But arriving home he learns that his wife was unfaithful to him and she was subsequently banished from the family. She is held in a dungeon and tradition demands that he kills her.

Mehmet (Halil Ergün) is facing the vendetta, since by his fault his wife's brother died. Her family is furious that he wants to take his wife and children to flee with them.

Ömer (Necmettin Çobanoglu) arrives in his native Kurdish village and sees the military engaged in a policy to kill everyone who does not obey.

Meviat (Hikmet Çelik) takes the place of his deceased brother in the family, but it quickly becomes clear to him that the supposed freedom hardly differs by religious and tradition-bound pressure of a prison.

All have dreams of what they will do in their short freedom, but those dreams are quickly dashed. They find that those who are not in a concrete prison are in a prison made by social tradition and by the government. The only freedom available in Turkey at this time is death.

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.

Yol has a very special place in Turkish cinema.It is a masterpiece in my opinion.What makes Yol different from other Turkish films.The most important reason is that it comes from its own culture.It doesn't try to imitate American films or some others.It has its own way.This is really very important in building a film.When Turkish directors catch this point like Yýlmaz Güney I believe very good Turkish films will exist in the future.

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.

The artistry of this movie is astonishing in virtually every aspect of its filmmaking. What makes that all the more remarkable is that the footage was all shot by the assistant director in Turkey then taken to Switzerland for Yilmaz Güney (a brilliant writer/director who had to leave Turkey to escape persecution and imprisonment, mostly because of his empathy for the plight of the Kurdish people under Turkish rule) to edit and dub. The cinematography is colorful, rich and varied. The musical sound track is beautiful and well-integrated. The various subplots seem to echo and build on each other. Somehow, while making the grim realities of modern Turkey all too evident, this film also left me with a feeling of the indomitability of those who struggle for freedom.