Having spent the last two years dreaming about and actually experiencing film school, it opened my eyes to an incumbent terror, the inevitable sorrows of the future. I guess it had to do with my high expectations of the place, followed by the blistering freefall I experienced instead.
Every other day, our “movie mentors” — as I called them — would screen their favorite flicks in the padded room, which featured sophisticated wall covers for maximum sound. Unfortunately, most of the movies they showed were either B-films or stuff so old they made my mum’s sun-dried tomatoes look like a new, innovative treat.
I must admit I only went to these “screenings” a couple of times. The first time I walked out of because I couldn’t really care less about a Dutch-speaking barmaid flying an airplane in the 1930s. And the second, well, I really don’t remember the second because I spent the time gawking at a pretty schoolmate who insisted on seeing it.
Alas, when I had to go to another — as part of my extra-credit bargain for missing too many classes — I bowed my head in disgust and snuck in an iPod for when the movie became too unbearable. That’s where it all began.
Expecting another dark, minimalist film I was totally unprepared for the exuberance and unsettling power of Bohman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly. A joint Iran-Iraq venture, I heard this was the first narrative flick to be shot in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein, and is a view inside a Kurdish refugee camp near the Turkish border (just prior to and during the US invasion).
The despair in this flick is, if anything, pure and true. It has one of the most provocative and disturbing images I’ve ever seen and (I think) wasn’t exactly meant to cater to mass appeal. Instead, it focused more on the seriousness and, some might say, treacherousness of war and the real victims of it.
In this wrenching story, things start off so badly and end up so much worse that Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby or Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu’s 21 Grams actually seem like heartwarming comedies by comparison.
Yes, well, that might actually be laying it on pretty thick but, you see, despite the fanciful title, Turtles Can Fly leads viewers into a really demonic quagmire of despond, one in which not just hope is strangled but virtually any possibility for human kindness.
In a country where there remain millions of landmines, the marketing of unexploded threats can be a lucrative business. At least, it is a means of survival for a 13-year-old boy old named Satellite, who groups youngsters to defuse landmines and sell them to arms dealers for food and other necessities. When he isn’t overseeing work details of the kids searching the surrounding countryside, Satellite tutors the community’s elders in grappling with the satellite technology they rely on for news about the impending war.
Soon enough, our hero Satellite meets the mysterious prognosticator, an armless boy named Henkov who is traveling with his beautiful sister Agrin and their baby brother (who actually turns out to be her own son). Satellite quickly falls for the prickly, charming Agrin and develops a grudging respect for Henkov, who indeed does seem to possess the ability of clairvoyance.
As it all nears the end, Henkov tells Satellite of imminent events that will forever change their lives. Now, I wouldn’t want to spoil the entire movie for you, just in case you guys are actually thinking of seeing it. Let’s just say that when you’re bleak… you’re bleak.
And not to make it sound any more than it already is, Ghobadi somehow captures the real essence of it all — using no props but the “real stuff.” The actors themselves are incredible (the story of the war is truly written in their soulful faces), particularly the one who plays Agrin; she’s astoundingly haunting in her portrayal of a young girl who is raped by Iraqi soldiers, impregnated and left to raise a son.
Ghobadi’s work is, without question, a remarkable study of commitment, as it shows us the plight of millions of stateless Kurds who are at the mercy of politicians who support them when it suits their purposes and oppose them when it doesn’t. And despite its all-out depression, this was both a celebration of the innocence of children and the warning about the dangers they face from overzealous fascists.
The movie haunted my thoughts long after I had left the padded room that day. And in some ways, it still comes back to me once in awhile. So I guess it’s kind of a celebration for me too… never thought I wouldn’t need an iPod to believe that turtles could, indeed, fly.
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