O Tempo e o Vento

A tiny poor village of a few hundreds, surrounded by rocky cliffs. Goats and olive trees, as everywhere in the region. The Black Sea can be seen from the cliffs, having the changing color of the sky, gray when it's windy, blue when it's sunny. Poverty of the place continuing in the majesty of the landscape, village life mastered by the moods of nature. The five times of prayer, midnight, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, are just brief moments to realize that you are at the mercy of what time brings.

This is Kozlu, the birthplace of Turkish director Reha Erdem, and Bes Vakit (Times and Winds, made in 2006) is about this village and these cliffs, about the moods of weather and the times of prayer, and about these people.

It is a movie full of love for this universe while devoid of any sentimentalism. The magnificent surroundings, the cliffs and the sea in close distance, pictured with awe, the poor village pictured with love, you feel this tenderness flowing from the screen; where the movie becomes unsentimental is when picturing the moods of people. They are his people, the guys of his village, the director is one of them, it is his universe. It is here love and lucidity. From the elders to the young, they are too challenged by these times and winds, to find space for kindness to one another. The elders are authoritative to the point of arbitrariness, the children grow up feeling the unfairness of the elders, hating them, childishly wishing their death. Three children of some eleven, twelve years are the main characters of this movie. On the threshold of puberty, a coming of age through frustration and resentment, balanced eventually by the miracles of nature they are witnessing. The unexpected coming and going of storms and winds will slowly teach them about the relativity of everything. The animal mating will be an abrupt lesson about the ultimate simplicity of love. The birth of a baby will show them the beauty of life despite all odds. The approaching of death of the father will make the boy suddenly and painfully realize what fear means, the terrible fear of loosing his father, how stupid his hate has been, his wish to see him dead.

This film is surprisingly balanced in many ways. It manages to have quirky, humorous characters who are still pretty real and relatable. It manages to have a young star who is likable yet also has some evil thoughts. It's beautiful and slow, but not heavy and profound.

All in all, a very worthy film. However there were a few awkward, overdone scenes that broke the spell for me. In particular, those with a father trying to make his good for nothing sons be useful. One makes do, but the other is both lazy and dumb. These characters never felt real....or even interesting.

Also, a few moments were just a little too telegraphed; a little too obvious. When a girl is running with a little baby down a steep road, for instance...hmmm, I wonder what might happen?

It depicts rural, small town life near the Turkish coast and, accordingly, moves at a pretty slow pace. Might be a bit slow for some, but should be enjoyable nonetheless. The current rating is over 9 points. Way too high, in my opinion, but this film is still a good time.

Celebrated Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem followed the international success of his previous films "Kaç para kaç" and "Korkuyorum Anne" with this mesmerising cinematic study of rural daily life in the Turkish hinterland which took home top awards at both the Istanbul and Adana Golden Boll International Film Festivals and secured international distribution.

Özkan Özen proves a surprisingly talented young lead with powerful support from fellow youngster Ali Bey Kayalı and Elit İşcan who all seem incredibly natural in there roles whilst Bülent Emin Yarar heads up the adult supporting cast which includes fellow Erdem regular Taner Birsel, Yiğit Özşener and the gorgeous Selma Ergeç.

The talented filmmaker takes his title, which translates as "five times", from the 5-times daily call to prayer that regulates the daily life of the Turkish peasants at the core of this film and divides up Florent Herry's exquisitely cinematography accordingly as it flows from character to character pausing each time to take in the gorgeous Çanakkale countryside.

Can you sing the call to prayer?

While there's nothing wrong with creating a film that says life is pretty much a drag for young people who are innocent victims of their parents and grandparents traditional ways, this film beats the theme to death.

For me, the film primarily rings with one quality: hopelessness. Filled with symbolism designed, I believe, to express the filmmaker's view that the preadolescents we meet are pretty much resigned to life as it is, and without even a hint that they have any way out of their situation, the film, while photographed beautifully, and with competent acting by most of the characters, emerges as little more than a turgid overview of a rural life that few westerners have been witness to on the screen.

There are far better films that do the same thing. I think of Bicycle Thieves, of the Apu trilogy, of Sugar Cane Alley, and of several other titles that bare witness to humans (young people especially) living lives of "quiet desperation" (as Thoreau put it), but which do so in ways that indicate the reasons, and which also present their characters as people who at least make an attempt to struggle against a situation they little understand and of which they are the victim.

Don't avoid the Times and Winds. See it, but do so as a lesson in how an inadequate film could have been so much more.

Dan Bessie / danbes@volcano.net

Two pre-teen boys and a girl endure pain caused by the inbred generational habits of their parents in Reha Erdem's minimalist Times and Winds. Set in the remote village of Kozlu in Northern Turkey overlooking the sea, the film reflects the traditions of the culture in which it occurs, showing how parents repeat the mistakes of their own parents and those that came before them. Times and Winds is shown in five parts beginning with night and ending with morning, mirroring the daily time that is divided by the sound of the call to Salah, the compulsory ritual prayer, performed five times each day after ablution. The film stresses the importance of religion and prayer in the life of the simple villagers but it is apparently not enough of an influence to prevent them from mistreating their children.

Omer (Ozkan Ozen) holds feelings of bitterness towards his father, the local imam, who not so subtly favors his brother and is not hesitant to say how much smarter the younger boy is. Omer dreams of ways to kill his father – opening the window over his bed so his cough will worsen, emptying the capsules of the medicine he is taking for his illness, pushing him over a cliff, or simply getting together a group of local scorpions to pay him a visit. Omer's best friend Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) is upset when he sees his grandfather constantly demean his father, calling him useless and lazy. Yakup also has a crush on his teacher (Selma Ergec) and refuses to wash the thumb that is stained with the teacher's blood from a foot mishap. When the boy sees his father furtively peeking into the window of his teacher's house, he is devastated.

The boys' female cousin, Yildiz (Elit Iscan), has a strained relationship with her mother who favors her younger sister and uses her as a household slave. Though sexuality is barely touched on in the film, Yildiz is brought to confused tears when she hears her parents making love. Other scenes show the children's embarrassment when they watch animals mating in the field, reminiscent of the film Japon by Carlos Regadas, whose poetics seem to have been an influence in this film. Another boy, Davut (Tarik Sonmez), an orphan who is the town shepherd, shows the scars on his back to the town council after he is physically beaten by a villager, but can only cringe when they tell the offender that what he did was wrong but exact no punishment.

Times and Winds has a poetic look and feel with beautiful pastoral scenes of the Turkish countryside in summer captured by cinematographer Florent Herry, but shots such as the children sleeping outdoors are repeated once too often to maintain interest. While the music of Arvo Part lends atmosphere, it is overly dramatic and is used to the point where it becomes irritating and distracting. In a film of this nature where there is little narrative drive, it seems that the ambient sounds of nature would have better served the director. Times and Winds has strong performances from its non-professional cast and contains some poignant moments that can be powerful, but Erdem seems to be trying too hard and the film lacks flow and the kind of emotional pull to make it truly memorable.