Mutluluk

Some forty years ago, one went to a movie because it was based on a famous book. Today you are more likely to ferret out a book because the movie on which the film was based was interesting and probably warrants a closer look at the written word.

One such movie that has set me on the paper chase is the Turkish award winning film "Mutluluk (Bliss)" based on the Turk Zulfu Livaneli's book of the same name. Apparently the considerably well-known book has been adapted and written for the screen by three writers and the director of the film Abdullah Oguz. I believe the translation of the book is available in English but I have yet to lay my hands on a copy. My search for the Livaneli book resulted in two interesting bits of trivia. Livaneli is himself an award-winning film director (at San Sebastian and Montpellier festivals) not just a literary figure. And Livaneli is a music composer of some repute, having closely collaborated on music with Mikis Theodrakis (composer of "Zorba the Greek") of Greece and Livaneli provided the music for my favorite Turkish director Yilmaz Guney's film "Yol" (the Way).

The first five minutes of the film "Bliss" (probably the most stunning 5 minutes in the entire film) is pure heavenly cinema—not anything remotely related to literary genius. You have a shot of a hillock and its mirror image captured in the still waters in the foreground, with heavenly music provided by (you guessed it!) Livaneli. As you are mesmerized by this feast for the eye and ear, the crane shot of the camera zooms in on a herd of sheep. So what's so spectacular? Anyone can do that, you say. But wait, the director captures a cyclical contrarian rotation of the sheep within the herd that is idyllic, providing almost an epiphany of what is to follow in the movie. How the director got the herd to move in that fashion beats all logic and likely animal choreography.

What follows after the opening sequence is a typical honor killing dilemma. A young orphan woman in beautiful lovely rural Turkey has been raped. There is no evidence of who perpetrated the crime until towards the end of the movie. The tradition is that the hapless women are given rope to hang themselves. As the young lass is reluctant to kill herself, her family decides to send her to the city where her escort is charged with the job of honor killing—-kill the woman who has been raped.

What follows is a love story between the killer and the victim, a fascinating interplay of the duo with a rich intellectual who owns a wonderful yacht and is running away from a marriage and responsibility, soaking in the natural beauty of the Aegean Sea and the picture postcard coastline. Everyone seems to be running away from some problem or the other...only to find refuge in beautiful nature. Director Oguz and writer Livaneli seem to suggest that "bliss" for the three different characters can be attained if they try to attain it, irrespective of the socio-political or religious conditions in which they (and therefore you, the viewer) are placed by providence or a cosmic scheme of sorts.

At the end of the film, you begin to wonder at what the film insinuates. At a very obvious level there is a conflict between tradition and modernity, between rural lifestyles and the urban lifestyles, between Asian cultures and European/Western values. At a not so obvious level, there are pregnant references to turmoil within Turkey. Much is lost in translation. You get a feeling that there is more to the story than what you are told in the film. Why did author Livaneli, himself a filmmaker, choose not to direct the film or even write the screenplay, when he graciously provided the music? Perhaps there is an inverse image of the story as suggested by the opening shot of the film. Probably the novel will have some answers. Even without the answers the film is an invitation for anyone to glimpse the beauty of Turkey, with its melting pot of cultures, religions, and ethnicities. More than anything this possibly sterilized Turkish film has a positive outlook for a country seeking EU membership. Its cinema is quietly surging forward just as its writers are beginning to get noticed worldwide.

This delicately-paced story about the ironclad Turkish custom of honor killing encompasses all the restrictive practices of closed societies that grant no freedom to women and punish them for the sins of the men. Because young Meryem has been raped, she must be sent to Istanbul to be executed far from the shame at home.

Although the story has been told innumerable times, Bliss is as fresh as the Turkish breeze blowing over the sailboat Meryem and her cousin, Cemal, find refuge on after he fails to kill her transporting her to the city. It is difficult to expunge the images, like those in Knife in the Water, of purity and violation that hang around the boat while the skipper professor, knowing nothing of the horror Meryem has been through, takes on the couple as crew and eventually as students in the art of leading a happy life.

Director Abdullah Ogduz successfully mixes the lyrical escape with the impending doom, the happiness tainted by her past as an impure woman, and the relentless pursuit by a family bound to kill the young woman.

The three principals are as powerful as any others in this year's canon: Cemal is a robust young ex-soldier used to obeying officers and his father; Meryem, who refuses to accuse anyone of the rape, is a naïve with a second-grade education fascinated by the ship's map, a gentle metaphor for the transforming nature of the trip; professor Irfan, is a handsome, charismatic older man, who must navigate his own life to reach a more peaceful place, but not before he teaches the couple about love and life.

Bliss is an ironic title or not depending on your orientation. I recommend you make up you mind by seeing one of the simple sea stories that tells a much larger tale about repression and the emergence of women from imprisonment.

Maryem's innocent face will haunt you as the images of the romantic boat lull you into complacency about the hidden horrors of repressive societies.

Bliss is one of the best films to sail into theaters in the last two years.

Bliss (2007)

Utterly gorgeous, and utterly deplorable for a Westerner to see the mistreatment of a girl in this way. I know I'm supposed to be open minded and accept that this Muslim Turkish culture is simply different than my own, but it's clear that the movie, made by Turks, is also a condemnation of the barbarity shown.

The movie is very sensitively done, very well filmed. I found it frankly slow, in terms of development, depending on a lyrical mood and terrific light to sustain ordinary moments as well as extraordinary ones. The contrast of utter modernity and utterly medieval ideas is fascinating, but also frustrating. But that's part of the point. It's quite a beautifully, tenderly made movie, with some very real types allowed to blossom.

In the end, by the end, it's so completely heartbreaking and heartwarming, you will fall in love with Turkey, and with what this film is saying about life so well, no matter what your beliefs.

There are absolutely only two reasons why I loved this movie. First one is the way it was written. It is expected and unexpected at the same time. It takes so many different turns that it becomes hard to what to expect for the next second. The second one was of course the acting. Everyone played their parts extremely well. I felt like I was one of them and experiencing the same kind of emotions. I could not keep myself from crying and laughing at the same time. It really is hard to find movies like this. And of course what really impressed me was the ending. I have really found what I was looking for. It is kind of rare to find movies that have satisfying endings. I would also like to use this opportunity to recommend couple more movies for those who share the same kind of movie taste; Babam ve Oglum, Kabadayi

"Bliss" is the very best new movie I've seen in years, an enthralling, exquisite, moving, important film. Given current trends, I can't imagine a mainstream American film being this brave, this engaging, and this pertinent. If you are a thinking, feeling movie fan, see "Bliss." You won't regret it.

Some reviews make "Bliss" sound like a National Geographic documentary about exotic foreigners, or an essay about honor killing, or a stab at Muslim-Western clashes, or a slide show of exotic Turkish locales. "Bliss" is none of those things. It is a movie-movie, a film that sucked me into its world and made me forget my surroundings; "Bliss" made me love and care about the characters on screen from its opening shots. I was, at times, on the edge of my seat; I cried; I shouted at the screen; my palms sweat. After the film was over, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted to grab all my movie fan friends and demand that they see it and that we sit up all night talking about it.

That I loved the characters is testimony to how powerful this film is. Cemal (Murat Han), the main character, is a returning Turkish solider who's been off fighting terrorists. (The terrorists in question may be Kurds pressing for an independent Kurdish state, but the film never names them.) Cemal broods much, smiles little, carries a gun, suffers from PTSD, and is plagued by nightmares. He slavishly accepts, from his father, the all-powerful headman of his village, the job of honor killing his distant cousin, Meryem (Ozgu Namal), a naïve village girl who has been raped. Cemal is a genuinely scary guy. He curses at Meryem, denouncing her as a "whore" and a "bitch." He slaps her. In some very tense scenes, he reveals himself quite ready to, and capable of, killing several people. And yet "Bliss" made me love Cemal, care about his fate, and see the world through his eyes. In fact, when Cemal fails at his first attempt to kill Meryem, and squats in shame, I felt sorry for him. That is powerful filmmaking. Murat Han is completely natural in the role. You never catch him acting. He just is Cemal.

Ozgu Namal, as Meryem, gives an equally miraculous performance. Again, I felt, when watching this, as if I were watching real people. I've lived in pre-modern, traditional villages, and Namal and the other actors expertly capture the cringing, downtrodden posture that subservient people assume in the presence of their superiors in the village hierarchy. Men like Cemal cast their eyes down and say "Yes, sir," when ordered around by the village headman; girls like Meryem, with no status whatsoever, cringe at all times, scuttling through life, struggling to assure their continued existence by continuously pleasing those above them – and those above them include everyone. Meryem cringes and looks away and plasters herself to a train seat when handing Cemal a pita bread sandwich she has made for him; he must eat and be satisfied before she can eat. Even when she gets a fish bone stuck in her throat her hands flutter and her eyes grow wide with anxiety as Cemal tries to keep her from choking – ironic given that his job is to kill her. She doesn't want to demand too much. Her body language says, "Don't worry; I'll just choke to death. I don't want to be a bother." Namal conveys the complex inner life of a girl who has been denied any identity or individuality by her crushing, loveless surroundings. In one scene, she talks about her relationship with her grandmother, and it is so poignant only a stonehearted film-goer could avoid crying.

But Turkey is not just traditional villages; it also has a coast where Western tourists and modernized Turks lounge in bikinis. Cemal and Meryem encounter Irfan (Talat Bulut), a renegade professor cruising the coast in his yacht. Irfan smiles and enjoys life; his hair is snowy white. He is bright opposite to brooding, dark, Cemal. But Irfan's life isn't perfect, either. He doesn't quite know how to fit his modern, sunny mentality into traditional Turkish culture.

All scenes, even lighthearted ones, are shadowed by menace. The law is ironclad: Meryem must be killed by a member of her family. She has been raped; she is "tainted," as Cemal puts it. There is a knife, a gun, a pair of strangling hands, hiding around every corner of every shot, even those on the professor's yacht. You know that no matter how far Meryem gets from her village, she is not going to find safety within the confines of this world, or this movie.

Because this film caused me to care so much about Cemal, Meryem, and Irfan, I struggled with the questions they faced. How can a raped girl survive in a traditional Muslim village? If she escapes her village, where can she make a life for herself? Can she, ever? Can a girl who has been trained to cringe and serve and hide behind her veil ever fit in with Westernized Turkish girls, who, clad only in bikinis, visit Prof. Irfan's yacht? And what about Cemal? Will he always only be a man who responds with frightening rage when asked to set a table because that is "women's work," who feels duty-bound to beat down any woman who questions his absolute, masculine authority? And who is to say which world is better, the village, with its tradition, or the professor's world, where he does seem truly without anchors?