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Undescribable Perfection

Such a frustrating disappointment

Let's be realistic.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Reha Erdem captures so much in a world almost barren of freedom, opportunity and dialogue. Humanity is everywhere here, and in many of its forms evokes emotion from the observer. The film portrays a life and people who are strong and hard, yet their charm is plentiful. The cast are excellent and the photography seems to be more than just aesthetically delightful. It successfully connects the viewer with the place. The position of the village with its incestuously small life in the huge open timeless landscape with the sea in the distance is constantly magnificent. It echoes the theme, much like the words of the old lady when we first meet her. There are moments of brutality and horror, such as the moment the young girl drops her sister. Delicate moments and vulgar behaviour is witnessed throughout. I particularly enjoyed the run down to the orchard and grazing field each time a child called to his or her father. Or the brushing of heads with the leaves of the tree outside the schoolteacher's house. There is much to see here, even beyond the wonderful children. I loved the two brothers (one good and competent, one not so much) and their interaction with their father. The town's council, the temperamental electricity, the old lady, the school children, and the shepherd boy etc. also fill this document with life. That is the essence of this film (allowing for the fact that I know nothing of Turkish village life.) It is a colourful and expertly made documentation of a Turkish village. Successful in almost every way.Keen to cast an eye over authentic Anatolia, it was slightly disappointing to learn the actress playing the teacher is actually half German, from Germany, and is a doctor and a model. Although this wasn't as noticeable as in the Iranian-Turkmen 'Frontier Blues' where the woman also looking out of place is actually English and even half Berber. Although despite these two discernable women, generally they didn't distract too much from the wonder of the respective settings. As this is a film bubbling with life and character, it can easily absorb its minor faults. Serving as Bresson-like interludes and probably signifying the death of childhood, the wonderful photography of the children in dead like poses in rubble, hay, and vegetation was seemingly parallel to the story's style of filming, and almost out of place. Much like the usually excellent Arvo Part's music which serves only to create an ominous feel or sense of unease which is perhaps the purpose of this odd choice of soundtrack. Whereas the call to prayer works very well.An excellent glimpse of somewhere in Anatolia. Mr. Erdem has acheived a beautiful ode to his beautiful homeland.

While there's nothing wrong with creating a film that says life is pretty much a drag for young people who are innocent victims of their parents and grandparents traditional ways, this film beats the theme to death. For me, the film primarily rings with one quality: hopelessness. Filled with symbolism designed, I believe, to express the filmmaker's view that the preadolescents we meet are pretty much resigned to life as it is, and without even a hint that they have any way out of their situation, the film, while photographed beautifully, and with competent acting by most of the characters, emerges as little more than a turgid overview of a rural life that few westerners have been witness to on the screen. There are far better films that do the same thing. I think of Bicycle Thieves, of the Apu trilogy, of Sugar Cane Alley, and of several other titles that bare witness to humans (young people especially) living lives of "quiet desperation" (as Thoreau put it), but which do so in ways that indicate the reasons, and which also present their characters as people who at least make an attempt to struggle against a situation they little understand and of which they are the victim. Don't avoid the Times and Winds. See it, but do so as a lesson in how an inadequate film could have been so much more.Dan Bessie / [email protected]

BAS VAKIT (TIME AND WINDS) is less a narrative film than a suspended contemplation on the cycle of life, the passage of time, and the persistence of family traits. It is a work from Turkey of rare beauty visually, musically, and natural grandeur. Writer/director Reha Erdem is a poet as well as an accomplished filmmaker. Three young children are approaching the torrents of adolescence, each carrying emotional scars and family histories that will forever alter the way they reach adulthood. Omer (Ozkan Ozen) is the son of the local imam who climbs the minaret five times a day to chant the call to prayer: Omer's younger, smarter brother is favored by the father and Omer copes with the loathing for his father by planning his death. Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali), Omer's closest friend, has a crush on his teacher (Selma Ergeç) but is deeply disillusioned when he spies on his own father (whom he has always defended against his grandfather's abuse) attempting to court his teacher. Yildiz (Elit Iscan) is a girl under-appreciated by her mother and is stunned to overhear her parents coupling. The three children attempt to engage in a normal childhood, reacting tot he beauty of the natural surroundings of their poor little village to the point of learning animal husbandry first hand! They befriend another young orphan Davut (Tarik Sonmez), the town shepherd, when he sustains physical abuse from his guardian. The sensitivity of the children's reflections of their parents' maladaptive behavior creates a bond that sustains their daily trials. There is not a lot of narrative here, but the sensory pleasures of the film are immense. Divided into sections labeled Night, Evening, Afternoon, Noon and Morning, the film follows the marriage of the calls to worship that clock the lives of these people with the atmospheric cinematography by Florent Herry and embellished by the sumptuous musical score by Arvo Pärt. It is a long film (just short of two hours) that takes its time to unfold the mysteries of coming of age and it is a film that will haunt the viewer long after the credits have ceased. In Turkish with English subtitles. Grady Harp

Two pre-teen boys and a girl endure pain caused by the inbred generational habits of their parents in Reha Erdem's minimalist Times and Winds. Set in the remote village of Kozlu in Northern Turkey overlooking the sea, the film reflects the traditions of the culture in which it occurs, showing how parents repeat the mistakes of their own parents and those that came before them. Times and Winds is shown in five parts beginning with night and ending with morning, mirroring the daily time that is divided by the sound of the call to Salah, the compulsory ritual prayer, performed five times each day after ablution. The film stresses the importance of religion and prayer in the life of the simple villagers but it is apparently not enough of an influence to prevent them from mistreating their children.Omer (Ozkan Ozen) holds feelings of bitterness towards his father, the local imam, who not so subtly favors his brother and is not hesitant to say how much smarter the younger boy is. Omer dreams of ways to kill his father – opening the window over his bed so his cough will worsen, emptying the capsules of the medicine he is taking for his illness, pushing him over a cliff, or simply getting together a group of local scorpions to pay him a visit. Omer's best friend Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) is upset when he sees his grandfather constantly demean his father, calling him useless and lazy. Yakup also has a crush on his teacher (Selma Ergec) and refuses to wash the thumb that is stained with the teacher's blood from a foot mishap. When the boy sees his father furtively peeking into the window of his teacher's house, he is devastated.The boys' female cousin, Yildiz (Elit Iscan), has a strained relationship with her mother who favors her younger sister and uses her as a household slave. Though sexuality is barely touched on in the film, Yildiz is brought to confused tears when she hears her parents making love. Other scenes show the children's embarrassment when they watch animals mating in the field, reminiscent of the film Japon by Carlos Regadas, whose poetics seem to have been an influence in this film. Another boy, Davut (Tarik Sonmez), an orphan who is the town shepherd, shows the scars on his back to the town council after he is physically beaten by a villager, but can only cringe when they tell the offender that what he did was wrong but exact no punishment.Times and Winds has a poetic look and feel with beautiful pastoral scenes of the Turkish countryside in summer captured by cinematographer Florent Herry, but shots such as the children sleeping outdoors are repeated once too often to maintain interest. While the music of Arvo Part lends atmosphere, it is overly dramatic and is used to the point where it becomes irritating and distracting. In a film of this nature where there is little narrative drive, it seems that the ambient sounds of nature would have better served the director. Times and Winds has strong performances from its non-professional cast and contains some poignant moments that can be powerful, but Erdem seems to be trying too hard and the film lacks flow and the kind of emotional pull to make it truly memorable.