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"You think you can go on a pilgrimage and come back clean as a whistle?   Only God can forgive you, sir."  --Turgut, an honest former employee of Hasan, branded as a thief by Hasan, when Turgut procured less price from a buyer of Hasan's produce, a buyer who was only ready to pay that lesser sum   N uri Bilge Ceylan and Semih Kaplanoglu are the two most important internationally recognized contemporary film directors who make films of very high standards.  Commitment Hasan is the second film in a row from Semih Kaplanoglu (it follows the 2019 film Commitment or Baglilik Asli) with the key word “Baglilik” in Turkish language (or “Commitment” in English) in the titles of both films. Kaplanoglu watchers can assume this film is possibly a part of a second trilogy in the making–the first one being the Yusuf trilogy of “Yumurta” ( Egg ) (2007), “Sut” ( Milk ) (2008), and “Bal” ( Honey ) (2010), made in reverse chronology of Yusuf’s life. All the five films are original t...

The poster captures the essence of the film-- the child is the fulcrum of the tale, with the mother almost absent in the frame F ilm directors and screenplay writers Semih Kaplanoglu and Nuri Bilge Ceylan are the leading lights of Turkish cinema today. Their contributions have understandably resulted in Turkish films being considered among the very best in the world in recent decades. Unfortunately, Kaplanoglu’s previous film Grain made in 2017 has been totally neglected by most cineastes, even though the film won the top honor at the 2017 Tokyo film festival and was made in English on a subject that ought to interest a larger educated film-going global public. It possibly antagonized the powerful lobby of private sector involved with agricultural genetic engineering that effectively curtailed the film’s distribution and publicity worldwide, similar to the case of the Cannes-award winning European film Little Joe (2019). Grain was a departure for Kaplanoglu, not just for venturing i...

D irector Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most distinguished filmmakers alive and The Wild Pear Tree is arguably one of his best works to date, currently on show at the Denver Film Festival after its premiere at Cannes in the competition section earlier this year. If the viewer is patient to absorb a 3-hour film with lots of loaded conversations and meaningful visuals, the hours spent would be well compensated.   More so, if the viewer is well read and perceptive. It is a film that encompasses social, political and theological thoughts without being too obvious. Remarks made in passing are not easy to ignore in any Ceylan film, less so in this one. Sinan, the graduate, reads at home rather than look for work On a very simplistic level, a young man Sinan returns home after graduating in a distant college to his home town after some years.   He realizes his school-teacher father Idris has slid into a compulsive gambler, accumulating debts. His mother Asuman keeps the home runnin...

G rain is a very important film of 2017.  It is an important film for several  reasons.  Globally, very few feature films have dealt with agriculture as the focal point. In India, several important films were made on social themes related to agriculture— Mother India (1957), Do Bigha Zameen  (Two acres of land) (1953) and Upkar (Good Deed) (1967) are examples.  China’s Red Sorghum similarly dealt with society more rather than agriculture. Even the celebrated Russian film, Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) dealt with social issues of collective farming rather than agriculture per se . Semih Kapalonglu’s Grain is a rare feature film where the focus is more on agriculture and science, and less on the social fallouts. A rare film that could be compared to Grain in content is Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (1973)—a Hollywood film on a bizarre industrial response to alarming global food shortages. Prof Erin (Barr) finally stumbles on an underground store of true, unc...

W inter Sleep is one of the outstanding cinematic works of 2014. Winter Sleep is a daunting 196 minutes long movie and could put off an uninitiated, immature viewer craving for action, sex and thrills. The Turkish director Ceylan, speaking to a packed audience that had earlier stood in long, winding queues on a humid December morning in Trivandrum city in India to view the award winning cinematic work and glimpse the accomplished director, during the International Film Festival of Kerala, India, stated with a note of apprehension “ I hope all of you slept well last night as my film is more than 3 hours long .” Interior lighting that embellishes the film Winter Sleep , as in the case of the director’s previous two films— Three Monkeys and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia —proved one fact, it was a work of a contemporary master of cinema, while requiring a viewer’s undivided concentration to savour all the multifaceted morsels of delectable cinematic treats the film offers in the form of am...