Dersimiz: Atatürk

In Turkey we have a saying "Gardrop Ataturkcu", it means a closet minded person who is using Ataturk's name to his own gains. Those people filth their mouth by uttering the name of our glorious leader Ataturk.

There was an Ataturk movie madness during before and around 2010. There is Veda, Çanakkale movies, Mustafa documentary etc. Late Levent Kirca (peace be upon his soul) made a parody out of this people who show Ataturk as a commercial object in his 'Olacak O Kadar' show under the title of "Atam Çekimdeyiz", I suggest you watch it on Youtube. These media milked real Ataturk followers' emotions, while on the background, important events are occuring and Turkey going backwards in 2010. They all said they love Ataturk however when it came to act in 2010, they did nothing. When push comes to shove, these Sozde Ataturkculer are nowhere to be seen.

This movie poorly commercialized Ataturk made impersonation so bad it seems like a parody. Sprinkle half-famous people around this "movie", have them say how much they love Ataturk. Some old guy telling children story and live the same trip with them. This is not a movie, this is not a documentary. This is a haphazard school project where you cringe until you see your own kid's scene and want to leave afterwards when it finishes.

The tag line reads "both for adults and children", but that lousy script of the "movie" parts would only be suitable for children under 10.

I wish there was a "director's cut" for adults, with no child's play, only the "documentary" parts. Actually, original recordings, visualizations, animations, and music were pretty good. Black/white memoirs were probably the best parts.

I'll divide my score points into two: 5 for the movie part and 5 for the documentary part. The documentary deserves a 5 out of 5. And the total score? 5 out of 10.

The main problem with the movie is that the lead man who is supposed to play Ataturk looks nowhere near to him despite all those heavy make up. He rather looks like a rascal, bad looking mafia boss. Come on guys, is that the best you could do?

Turkish Cinema seems to have a long long way of learning how to make a proper historical movie. If you want to depict a historical figure, try to find at least somehow similar looking guy if not exactly.

Ataturk was an extremely handsome man with exceptionally high charisma and marvelous posture. This movie is actually nothing but an insult to his memory.