Bergen

This story needed to be told, thanks for telling it. The movie theater is full even in a pandemic.

To my taste, it is a bit 'too trying' to be dramatic however definitely deserves a spot on the 'to watch' category.

In 1970s Turkey, the life struggle and quest for love of a talented female artist who grew up without a father. In this profoundly tragic story, set against the backdrop of family pressures and the distorted values of a male-dominated society, you will question the meaning of 'honor'. You will shed tears. When it comes to the production, the cast and the story look quite neat in overall manner. To be honest, I would expect Farah to perform a more sentimental acting, knowing her personal perspective against violence while Erdal Besikcioglu was much much better than "good". He has been always a an actor of such characters.

Growing up I listened to Bergen, she had a gift a talent, which was her voice. I was well aware of her story with her possessive husband who eventually consumed her.

I would say this was great cinematography good acting and a movie worth seeing.

My Criticism of this movie would be they could have elaborated more on her and the husbands character but that would have meant a longer movie who wants to watch a movie for three hours.

And the other being using the actual singers voice or music, as much as I praise the acting she is an actor, Bergen would not have been famous with that voice, the same mistake was made in the Muslim movie, please when making biopics of singer use their actual voice so people can understand why they got to where they did. You only hear Bergens real voice at the end of the movie.

This movie also raises an important issue woman face which is domestic violence and how far things can go if punished inadequately.

I would recommend this movie 🍿

Bergen's life is heartbreaking. The fact that the movie draws attention to her life and the injustice in violence against women is exceptionally valuable. It points out the absurd reality of a dangerous, unstable man, a murderer, not being locked up in prison today. I respect this movie for that.

However, there are some things that bother me with the movie. First of all, I don't think jumping from one scene to another was the way to go when making a biopic. We don't see the reasons behind Bergen's decisions. Regardless those decisions were wise or not, the filmmakers should have revealed her reasons and closed the gaps to let the audience empathize with her and not misunderstand her so that maybe we wouldn't have heard idiotic comments like "she had it coming". What made her change her mind? Was she afraid? Was she punishing herself for something? Everybody has reasons and unfortunately hers were not really included in her own biographical film. I guess some fictional and dramatic additions to her real story were more important than the reasoning. Second, I really wish they had gone for another actor for the main role. Farah Zeynep could not reflect Bergen's character and mannerisms well enough in my opinion. She is rather just herself dressed in 80's clothes but still acting and speaking like a complete millennial. I didn't see her capturing an emotion, she basically overacts every time the character is happy, which keeps her performance far from being realistic. Also, there is so much yelling or screaming in her dialogues with her mother that it literally hurt my ears.

These being said, despite that the story could have been handled a lot better, I still think this movie is worth seeing. I appreciate the producers and the crew for their dedication to draw attention to this story and thereby stories like this, which is what matters at the end of the day. I also think the makeup & costume department deserves a big credit. The accuracy of period makeup and hair was just spot on.

Bergen, a Turkish arabesque singer who represented arabesque culture in 80s in Turkey is a figure for all those who are exposed to male violence in Turkey. The film portrays this figure's life from childhood to her death by good acting and not engulfing in pure arabesque. Farah Zeynep Abdullah and Erdal Besikcioglu deserve acclaim for their acting. The thing is that some passages of stages are made all of a sudden. Apart from that I like the cinematography, acting, not the mention the fact that the scenario is based on Bergen's own life. What is more, at the end of the film, it calls the attention to domestic violence against women which should also be applaudable.

In conclusion, Bergen draws huge amount of audience to the cinema which suffered a lot from the pandemic. I have never witnessed such an enthusiastic audience in motion pictures for a long time.