26/08/2011
Gareth Evans / Moviemail
Yusuf Trilogy DVD Review
A great cinematic trilogy, containing Bal (Honey, 2010 - available separately), Süt (Milk, 2008) and Yumurta (Egg, 2007). These are sensuous and searching rites of passage, says Gareth Evans.
Despite ever-growing levels of film production across the globe – thanks in the main to affordable digital technologies, the emergence of genuinely distinctive voices in world cinema remains a rarity. Beyond a striking one-off, it’s harder than ever to build a body of work in this far from secure arena. Which is what makes the presence of Turkey’s Semih Kaplanoglu all the more welcome. Following his compatriots Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Reha Erdem from festival acclaim to wider exhibition, Kaplanoglu’s now secured his place as one of the finest contemporary filmmakers anywhere with the astonishing Yusuf biographical trilogy. Told in reverse order, it follows the eponymous character, a poet in middle age (Egg; Yumurta) back through his student years (Milk; Süt) to his numinous childhood in the deep forests with his wild-beekeeper father (Honey; Bal). All three films share a profound sense of the complexity of parent / child relationships, but locate these unfolding dynamics within a wider social context, as a traditionally rural Turkey faces rapid modernization, with men and women facing serious challenges to their expected identities and roles. But if this makes the films sound like dry exercises in social realism, think again. Luminously photographed, and extraordinarily scored, these are strikingly embodied expressions of being in the world - profoundly sensuous, searching and beautiful rites of passage. Nowhere is this better realized than in Bal, comparable to Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive in its envisioning of the mystery of childhood. Here, the ambiguities of the natural world – and humanity’s threatening of its ancient order - shape a revelatory journey from innocence to experience, one grounded in the specificities of place but resonant and relevant to us all. Claiming the 2010 Berlin Golden Bear for best film, it marks the triumphant culmination of one of the great cinematic series of recent years.
Gareth Evans on 26th August 2011
