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"Turtles Can Fly" is the third feature film that
Bahman Ghobadi, a Kurdish director from Iran, has
made about the suffering and resilience of his
people, who have the bad luck to live spread across
the often volatile borders of several nation-states,
including Turkey and Iraq.
While the status of the Kurdish nation remains
perilous, Mr. Ghobadi has set out to give the Kurds
a national cinema, and to bring their traditions and
their language, as well as their troubles, to the
attention of global audiences.
His new film arrives garlanded with awards from
international film festivals. Like its predecessors
- "A Time for Drunken Horses" and "Marooned in Iraq"
(also known as "Songs of My Motherland") - it
presents a harsh account of war, displacement and
deprivation that is saved from utter bleakness by a
tough, earthy lyricism. Like many other Iranian
filmmakers, Mr. Ghobadi often uses children in his
movies, for their guilelessness and vulnerability,
and also because they are scrappy, stubborn and
naturally funny. Adults are fairly peripheral in the
world of "Turtles Can Fly," which is set in a
mountainside village in Iraq that incorporates a
swelling refugee camp. The time is early 2003, and
the villagers wait, with a mixture of hope and
trepidation, for the Second Gulf War to begin, and
try to find news of its arrival. The chronology
makes it a kind of sequel to "Marooned in Iraq,"
which took place just after the Persian Gulf war of
1991, when Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds after
his defeat by the American-led coalition. The
war-weary Kurds in this film, foreseeing the end of
Mr. Hussein's rule, also worry the American invasion
will bring a new round of violence.
Mr. Ghobadi filmed "Turtles" in Iraqi Kurdistan
shortly after the end of major combat was declared,
and he appears agnostic about whether the American
intervention will improve daily life. Daily life, in
any case, interests him more than politics, and his
camera pushes through scenes of bustle and
confusion, looking for moments of clarity. The
people in the film, meanwhile, are impatiently
searching for information. Among the first images we
see is a hallucinatory vista of makeshift antennas
propped up in a field, like lightning rods or
windmills. Atop one of them is a lanky, nerdy boy,
with oversize glasses and a backward baseball cap,
whose nickname is Satellite (Soran Ebrahim). He is
the village's main source of technical know-how, and
later he lives up to his name by acquiring a dish
that allows the local elders to peruse "prohibited
channels" full of music videos before settling on
Fox News, which Satellite pretends to translate for
them. He serves as the de facto mayor of the local
children, many of them orphans, who gather spent
artillery shells and defused land mines to sell in
the nearby town. Satellite's best friend has been
maimed by a mine, as has Satellite's new rival, a
boy who has lost his arms and who shows up one day
with his sister and a baby whose parentage is
mysterious.
The hardships these children have faced are
horrifying, and Mr. Ghobadi neither sweetens nor
sensationalizes them, which makes "Turtles Can Fly"
all the more painful to watch. It is a heartbreaking
film, and cruelty sometimes seems to be not only its
subject but its method. Like the child on a high
cliff that is one of its recurring images, the film
walks up to the edge of hopelessness and pauses
there, waiting to see what happens next.
'Turtles Can Fly'
Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.
Written (in Kurdish, with English subtitles),
produced and directed by Bahman Ghobadi; director of
photography, Shahriar Assadi; edited by Moustafa
Khergheposh-Hayedeh Safiyari; music by Housein
Alizadeh; released by IFC Films. At the Lincoln
Plaza, Broadway at 62nd Street. Running time: 93
minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Avaz Latif (Agrin), Soran Ebrahim (Satellite),
Saddam Hossein Feysal (Pasheo), Hiresh Feysal Rahman
(Hangao), Abdol Rahman Karim (Rega) and Ajil Zibari
(Shirko).
www.nytimes.com
Turtles Can Fly, a k a Lakposhtha hâm parvaz
mikonand , 2004 - Iran/Iraq - Drama, Art/Foreign
Reviewed by A. O. Scott
REVIEW SUMMARY
"Turtles Can Fly" is the third feature film that
Bahman Ghobadi, a Kurdish director from Iran, has
made about the suffering and resilience of his
people, who have the bad luck to live spread across
the often volatile borders of several nation-states,
including Turkey and Iraq.
While the status of the Kurdish nation remains
perilous, Mr. Ghobadi has set out to give the Kurds
a national cinema, and to bring their traditions and
their language, as well as their troubles, to the
attention of global audiences. His new film arrives
garlanded with awards from international film
festivals. Like its predecessors — "A Time for
Drunken Horses" and "Marooned in Iraq" (also known
as "Songs of My Motherland") — it presents a harsh
account of war, displacement and deprivation that is
saved from utter bleakness by a tough, earthy
lyricism. Like many other Iranian filmmakers, Mr.
Ghobadi often uses children in his movies, for their
guilelessness and vulnerability, and also because
they are scrappy, stubborn and naturally funny.
Adults are fairly peripheral in the world of
"Turtles Can Fly," which is set in a mountainside
village in Iraq that incorporates a swelling refugee
camp. The time is early 2003, and the villagers
wait, with a mixture of hope and trepidation, for
the Second Gulf War to begin, and try to find news
of its arrival. The war-weary Kurds, foreseeing the
end of Mr. Hussein's rule, also worry the American
invasion will bring a new round of violence. — A. O.
Scott, The New York Times
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