Summer 2010..
It has been a hot one, as if that needed a restatement of sorts. El Nino aside, the upward warming trends over the long term continue. We had the hottest June in recorded history and the hottest first half of 2010 ever recorded and Arctic sea ice melted at a record pace. link (that is if you are in to science and facts).
But this one is not about the planet being cooked (do we have a Plan(et) B?

With heat indexes close to a 100, the temp at 7pm yesterday was around 95 and humidity high. I managed to jog (eke?) 3 miles out of my aging body.

And I looked like shit and felt a bit like it too for a bit. But I had my hydration going well so rebounded back quick. I am aching for cold weather, always loved cold weather. With each passing day get closer to fall and football! Yay!

The Wind Journeys (Spanish: Los viajes del viento)

 A thank you to the eclectic Lotusreads for telling me about this movie!.
What do you think of when you think of Colombia? Drug Lords? The right wing revolutionaries? 
Set aside all those notions that one may form about a country  by the woefully inadequate stuff that we in the US often get packaged as "news".
"The Wind Journeys" by director Ciro Guerra depicts a different Colombia, one of people living in small villages and eking out a simple existence, with music forming an important part of their lives.
Yes, this is a movie about music to some extent, but it is also more than that. It is road trip, one that happens largely in silence (or as one would say nothing much happens for periods of the movie), about the young and the old, and about ones purpose in life. 
The film follows the laconic Ignacio Carrillo (Marciano Martínez), who has recently lost his wife and believes that it is due to the horned accordion he plays, which is cursed by the devil and must be returned to his master and maker Guerra. Accompanying Ignacio, and often a subject of his disdain is the teen aged Fermin (Yull Nunez) from the same village, who wants to learn from Ignacio and become a famous troubadour and accordion player like him. 
Their journey is largely in silence (the film has no background score save for the music played by performers in the movie), Ignacio on the back of a donkey and Fermin on foot from Sucre in Colombia to Caserio Taroa in the La Guajira desert on the norther tip of Colombia.
Along their journeys Ignacio and Fermin encounter a cast of sometimes strange, oddball characters including Ignacio's brother and a woman at a small festival in a town along the way, where Ignacio plays an improvised tune, a homage of sorts to what is an old flame, throwing Fermin accompanying him on the drums into a complete tizzy about what he has to play.
There is also one scene that I found particularly compelling, a duel on accordions that reminded me of the Jugalbandi from Indian classical music or even the rap duels from films like 8 Mile. 
There were two ways that I looked at the movie (and not because I saw it over two days in two parts), one in which despite the beautiful vistas not much seems to happen for stretches. Mind you the vistas are beautiful, with the gorgeous photography brings to life whether it is the lush green forests, grasslands, the rugged mountains, rivers,  or the bare desert or stunningly white salt flats. They are all a joy to behold, but I digress.
The second way that I looked at the movie is the way I see it now. The silence is not just between the principals in the movie, it is also for us the viewer to think about what is said and left unsaid. The fact that it is beautifully acted, makes Ignacio and Fermin all the more human and appealing in their own ways.
It is a journey about about disappointments, hopes about losing and finding and about moving on, about the passing of the torch of sorts of traditions that are unwritten, but carried down thru generations.
This is in some ways a strange movie, but one well worth your time if you have a couple of hours to spare, where the lack of action on the screen or a traditional plot progression is not essentially a bad thing, for there is after all something to be gleaned about a journey on a road to understanding.

Not A Review "Broken Embraces" by Pedro Almodovar.

This past weekend I had a chance to catch Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" (Los abrazos rotos). It is certainly not his best film, but I still enjoyed it. It did not have the emotionally depth like "Volver" but it is a layered movie, with all the Almodovar flourishes that we know him now for.. the rich vibrant colors, strong, complex female characters, sex and sensuality, a plot where most of the pivotal events of the story happen in the middle, the beginning has the consequences and a resolution of sorts at the end. And of course it has Penelope Cruz. And I have seen a few Almodovar movies, so I was able to spot other regulars like Lola Duenas and Blanca Portillo.
So what is the movie about..
A man survives a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In that accident, he loses his sight, and also Lena(Penelope Cruz), the woman he loves so dearly. That man is now Harry Caine, a with which he signs his stories and scripts. But his real name is Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), and he used to be a film director. But after the accident only Harry Caine lives, in a self induced amnesia and denial of what was before.
He survives thanks to the scripts that he writes, with the help of his production manager, Judit Garcia (Blanca Portillo), and her son Diego.
Before a casual sexual encounter with a woman who helps him cross the street he finds out about someone from his past who has died, Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez).
One night Diego has an accident and as Harry takes care of him with his mother being away. Diego asks him about the past, and the story of Mateo tumbles out.
Lena who harbors aspirations to be an actress is the mistress of this Martel, a rich, powerful financier. She meets the then Mateo during a film audition and sparks fly soon after Lena is offered a role in a film to be financed by Ernesto. The suspicious Ernesto has his gay son document the making of this film and hires a lip reader to decipher what Mateo and Lena are talking about.
The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel is told with the elements common to a film noir.. those of jealousy, obsession, power, betrayal and guilt. Like other Almodovar films, this one is layered and one can watch the emotional layers get peeled as the story unfolds.
I liked the clarity and sharpness of the images, not in the literal sense, but in the way objects in the movie stood out, whether it was the furniture, the art on the walls, the colors (red seemed to dominate)..in complete opposition to the muddled emotional selves of the characters.
Could not help but also notice the art on the walls of Martel's mansion, the paintings of guns including one showing a rifle lowered, leveled and raised.. phallic symbolism? Power? For as powerful as Martel was, he was utterly powerless, completely captive to Lena, willing to go to tremendous lengths to keep her.
I have to try to catch some of Almodovar's earlier movies, just to see if the male characters always paled in comparison to the females. The camera here certainly loves Cruz, and her character here compared to the mother she played in Volver, is one which is more on an edge.
While I did not think this was one of Almodovar's better movies, it certainly held my attention.
Trailer below..

Sin Nombre... Not A review...

While I don't often put a lot of stock in top 10 lists for the year, I do use them as a sort of a guide to see what the different critics/publications/organizations think are the top movies of the year. One such movie that I saw on a few lists and had read some good things about was "Sin Nombre".
I got a chance to finally see this movie on Netflix, available via streaming online. I was amazed at the quality of the movie online, on the HDTV it streamed with out a stutter, and the picture quality was gorgeous.
We all take our names and whatever goes along with it like our identity, for granted. But what if you had to leave it all behind whether by choice or circumstances, and undertake a journey across borders not just physical but also those of the moral kind?
Sin Nombre (Without Name) is about that, a road movie with elements of a crime thriller thrown in. It is unflinching in it's depiction of the violence and the inner workings of the real life gang Mara Salvatrucha, (and those that are caught up in it willingly or otherwise). It also about the desperation that drives people from South America to come north in the search of a better life. The destitute migrants waiting for the trains up north while camped along the tracks in rail yards are depicted with a realism, that stays with the viewer. The movie is also about heartbreak and it held my attention from start to finish.
At it's heart Sin Nombre really is about two parallel stories that soon intersect. Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), is a young woman from Honduras who joins her father and uncle a long journey thru Guatemala and Mexico. Their eventual destination is her father's family in New Jersey. The other story is involves Willy, aka Casper (Édgar Flores), a young gang member, who is inducting the 12 year old Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) in to the gang. But Casper is not as much in to the gang as his leader lil Mago ( a convincing Tenoch Huerta) would like. Casper is more in to Martha (Diana Garcia), with Smiley often tagging along during their liaisons. As a part of the initiation process, Smiley is beaten up and then commanded, along with Casper to shoot a captured street rival.
The victim is then chopped and fed to dogs. Martha meanwhile is not taking to kindly to being kept in the shadows by Casper regarding his activities and shows up recklessly at a gang meet, setting in motion a series of violent acts, culminating with Casper fleeing north on top of the freight train with Sayra and her family. Sayra and Casper form an unlikely team and share something of a bond. I do not dare call it anything else. Their fates are tragically sealed, linked as they are by Casper's singular act when he, lil Mago and Smiley board the freight train to rob the migrants.
I actually found the most chilling character to be not lil Mago, but Smiley. The hypnotic gang culture seduces Smiley and by the end of this movie, he is no longer a child.
The one other thing I noticed about the movie was its cinematography. The shots of the train and countryside are truly beautiful. I also loved how the movie open with Casper staring at a poster of a forest ablaze with fall colors, that and Martha who he loves the only things of beauty in his life.
I also liked how a couple of scenes showed the dichotomy of feelings towards migrants. Along the journey north there are children along the way who welcome the migrants on the train by tossing fruit at them, while further north children welcome them with rocks as the train passes thru.
It is hard to believe that "Sin Nombre" is the directorial feature debut of writer/director Cary Fukunaga, and I can see why he received the director's award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, which also recognized this movie's outstanding cinematography by Adriano Goldman.
The actors in Sin Nombre may no names to us, but they are all amazing, and a testament to the wonderful job they and Fukunaga have done.
I could be wrong, but this is a gritty movie, yet it felt pretty and that may be due to the cinematography. Don't get me wrong though, this is a movie worth seeing.
So what inspired Fukunaga to make this movie? An interview with him along with a trailer of the movie is here.
Also embedded below.

Running..Random Musings..
Running

It has been a pain trying to do my usual runs in warm weather. But now that things are cooling off, I managed my usual 5 miler. Good to be back to running that distance again, and as the temps drop furhter, the longer I can run.














Idiocy Ascendant...
Like any other place, we in the US have our fair share of idiots and ignoramuses. Somehow the election of an African-American president seems to have driven them fucking batshit insane.
link
President Barack Obama is expected to welcome students back to school and suggest they stay in school and work hard and not to drop out of high school.
The reaction from the , has been anger and wild accusations that he’s planning to indoctrinate kids with socialist ideology.
Some even want to keep their kids out of school that day. link
And if you thought that was far out. Read this(By way of DarkSyde on DailyKos).
Evolution scares the heck out of them too... link

The shirts, which were designed to promote the band’s fall program, are light gray and feature an image of a monkey progressing through stages and eventually emerging as a man. Each figure holds a brass instrument.

And no I am not at all happy with the President with his lack of support/lukewarm support for the public option. Trying to compromise with people trying to destroy you is just a bad political move. If he drops the public option, I will likely not vote for him again, nor will I donate to his campaign when he is up for re-election.

Departures (Okuribito)..Not A review -

Having watched Waltz with Bashir and Revanche and read about the The Class and The Baader Meinhof Complex I was struck by the reviewers who thought that Departures (Okuribito) was not the right choice to win the best foreign film Oscar for 2008. The class I cannot talk about, as I haven't had a chance to watch it yet but Waltz with Bashir was clearly an innovative movie with the way it used animation to tell the story of a dark chapter in Israel's history. So a part of me did wonder why some critics thought that Departures was not deserving, questioning the idea of what the academy considers to be prize worthy.
I am still conflicted, having watched 3 of these 5 nominated films. Also I feel that there are always worthy films and stay out of the whole "best movie" categorization. A movie speaks to me in different ways, at different levels based on how I feel at that moment too. I just love movies..lets just leave it at that.
On to "Departures"...
Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), is a professional cellist who loses his job when his orchestra is dissolved due to lack of patrons. So he and his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), return to his hometown and move into the house that used to double as a bar Daigo’s mother used to run. Dead for a couple of years, and the whereabouts of Daigo’s father, who walked out on the family when Daigo was a young boy, are unknown. Eager to find work , Daigo answers an ad offering a career "working with departures". Sounds promising enough?
So he goes for an interview and, is hired almost before he sits down, at a high salary, too. There is a catch though, the "working with departures" is a misprint, the job involves working with the departed. Daigo will be preparing bodies for cremation something referred to as "encoffinment". His job is to assist Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a dour, gruff man who owns the business who dealing with his own grief, while helping others thru their losses.
But Sasaki knows his work, it is almost akin to an art form ( the Japanese term for this is “Nokanshi"), where with the grieving family watching, the corpse is prepared for cremation..the body bathed with a cloth, dressed up and made up, all done with delicate flourishes, a spiritual concentration and a respectful grace. All of this done without the deceased body being exposed except for their extremities.
Daigo is wary of his wife finding out about his new profession, for just as those in the Indian caste system that take care of the dead were discriminated against so are these in Japan, although with time that has gone but not vanished. This we find out when Daigo encounters one of his old friends who knows what he does, and is shunned. But Mika does find out and refuses to let him touch her, leaves him for a while, to return with news that she is soon to be the mother of his child, but still wanting him to change his profession.
Daigo does ponder his own fate as well, wondering about his own calling in life, the shadow of his absent father always around him. I don't want to give too much of this plot away. But this movie is not morbid despite the premise, the Nokanashi rituals are beautiful to watch as are some of the revelations during these ceremonies, where despite the Japanese habit of restraint, things are revealed during these moments, whether they are family fissures, or the heartbreaking loss of a child or a mother, or the quite peace of sending one along with love and kisses.
Daigo and Sasaki are the gentle gatekeepers of sorts of this journey to an afterlife. Daigo's entrance to this new profession does bring out it's share of laughs, which are best experienced watching the movie. The humor translates well too, I could tell from the audiences reaction as well as from the tears.
This is a moving, sentimental film, some of the visuals from Nothern Japan are stunning and the music subdued but just right. One might say you know what might happen next, but let that not stop you from enjoying this film. The main actors are able and well cast, and the secondary characters contribute to the of this wonderful film.
I loved how the movie began with the headlights of a car signifying an arrival, and ending with a departure, one that brings catharsis for the protagonist and as a viewer, I experienced the characters joys and sorrows as well. This movie might not find a broad audience here, it was a huge hit in Japan, but I could tell from the arthouse theater audience, that is was well appreciated. The movie was shown twice this month, I missed it last time, and am glad to have been able to see it.

A Return To Blogging..
Well kinda ..sorta..
I have been away a while. Probably lost what small audience I had. Why the lack of blogging? Mostly time, work has been crazy busy since end of Feb, blogs are mostly blocked at work, been on the go all the time, with little time to read or update blogs.
Having said that, I must say I have not been completely absent from blogs. I need my daily dose of political crack, so that has continued, mostly on the train on my commute. And that has about been the only reading I have done, other than the news kind.. and technical, work related, geeky stuff, which thrills me no end.. No it really does.. not to mention pays the bills, which in this economy I am pretty grateful for!
Am not sure what kind of blogging I will be able to do, maybe once a week? Or when it strikes my fancy, or I want to just vent? I find this place good for that. I am on Facebook too, but I find facebook too restrictive in the sense that, unlike this blog not anyone can read what I have to say unless they are my "Friend" Whatever that means!
Also too much background noise on there, and not very conducive to my more free wheeling spontaneous side.
So what do I have to say this Sunday?
Well been busy working, and every time I feel like taking a break take a peek at the other PC and came across the very important piece of news which at that moment CNN felt I should know.
Plus-sized TV shows find big audience

Ya I kid you not.. as if the audience for media is not fragmented enough. We now have this? Nothing against that, but CNN continues to be craptacular!
Talking about other things..
the internets I can't do without. Finally got FiOs in the neighborhood and moved to Verizon from Comcast, which always said they would get me good speed but never quite did. This ain't bad eh?


Sweet!
And in news that got this geek's interest...
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
link
Well we do make it easy for machines, some of us are just too friggin dumb and we make it easier for machines to look smart ;-) .. an example below..

But on a more serious note, AI has been advancing my leaps and bounds these past few years, and I wondered if we are moving close to this point..

The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.

The article talk about this in some detail, and I do think we will get to that point in the near future ( if we don't manage to destroy mother earth first).
Here is the interesting part..machines simulating empathy (god those empathy haters.. republicans..their heads must be exploding!).
Here is a link to the video..

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

Empathy for a Sick Child, From a Machine

Well that is all from me for now.. time to get back to work. Maybe I will get time to check out some of my old haunts on the blogosphere?

Slumdog Millionaire
Directors: Danny Boyle , Loveleen Tandan

(co-director: India)

Writers:Simon Beaufoy (screenplay) and Vikas Swarup (novel)

Via imdb.com.. The story of the life of an impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik, who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?", wins, and is then suspected of cheating. full summary.

I finally got to see "Slumdog Millionaire", a few weeks back but did not have a chance to put up this "Not A Review". I was curious to see this film as it has been garnering good reviews and an astonishing 135/145 reviewers on rotten tomatoes loved it giving it a 93% "freshness" rating. But that was not my only reason to want to see this movie. It literally came out of left field, making an unexpected run at and winning the 4 Golden Globes that it was nominated for.

I had some idea about the movie, but I had not read any detailed reviews. I enjoyed the movie, but I have seen other movies too this past year that I loved too.. Man on Wire, The Edge of Heaven, The Secret of the Grain, WALL-E , The Visitor and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. There are many more that I have to see. But I digress.

I can think of a number of reasons why this movie has struck a chord with viewers and critics alike, despite being in Hindi (30% of the movie?). Perhaps it is the story of an underdog, and that most of us love to root for one. I think the director, Danny Boyle has done an excellent job of adapting this story in to a movie, it helps that almost everyone knows the show "Who wants to be a millionaire", and the underlying themes transcend cultural and other differences, perhaps also explains it's success.

I do think that the first half of the movie was the stronger one in the sense that it had more of an impact on me, as it dealt with the harsh and very real and at times harrowing lives of these street kids (themes that have been handled well in other movies). The acting by the children playing Jamal, Salim and Latika was amazing, and that extends to the adults playing these and other roles too (The cast has been nominated for ensemble cast - SAG awards)
I think it was hard to work across the language barriers which Boyle did well, but it is perhaps harder to maintain a sense of continuity for the characters when they are played by 3 different actors spanning the different stages of their lives. And I think that came across really well for me.
Other than the obvious known names of Irfan Khan and Anil Kapoor most were not professional actors and it is a credit to the director that he manages to extract these great performances. One other thing that I liked was how the life experiences of Jamal are tied to his knowing the answers on the quiz show and the flashbacks do a wonderful job of setting up the character's evolution to a person that he is. I thought Anil Kapoor's performance was really good too, he does a good job playing the slick and seemingly friendly and jovial game show host while barely being able to contain himself with his not so subtle put downs of the "chai wallah".

I thought Dev Patel (he is British) gives a very strong performance as Jamal. Coming back to the second half of the movie, it was not as strong as the first half, I thought parts of it were a bit contrived or shall we say melodramatic, but I did not go in expecting anything "arthouse" like either. The the use of "D: It has been written" was a nice touch and we all know the desi/Indian thing about fate.

Did the depiction of life in Mumbai bother any of you who may know the city and be familiar with it? It did not bother me, I think movies do have some obligation to depict reality. And (I have not read the book this is based on) the director captures the grinding, stark poverty that is almost inescapable for anyone who lives in Bombay. I found the depiction of the rancid, seedy underbelly of the city to be very real. I think it was a fair portrayal.

I was reading an interview someplace with the director and he mentioned how frenetic the shooting pace was, and also often they did not get permissions to shoot till the last moment and at times none at all. And one could get the sense of how the city could close itself upon you.

I thought the movie in a lot of ways was tragic and funny, the changes of a rapidly globalizing India were well captured. The movie was also in essence a fairy tale on some levels, yet the themes of poverty, religious strife, exploitation and abandonment the characters experience are very real.

It reminded me to some extent of "The Pool" and like Chris Smith, I have to say Danny Boyle has captured the ethos of India and that in life anything is possible, perhaps it needs to be written but it would not happen without some pluck and verve and a dash of luck.

A couple of closing notes....

'Slumdog Millionaire' Hailed and Slammed in India

and the film, which opens in India next week (January 23), was just slammed by 66-year-old Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan on his blog (via The India Times): "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

For a completely contrary view.. Boyle is a poverty pimp with an Avid.

Credits - I see a lot of movies and I don't often see this. No one left the theater till the credits had finished rolling. Maybe the song and dance routine during the credits had something to do with that too.

A New Year..Back To My Reading
To anyone still reading this space, a very happy new year to you and your loved ones. Not a believer in new year resolutions and all that, but as 2009 began one of the things I did want to get back to was reading. While I do catch up on news and politics on the web and the newspaper, reading a book is one of the things that I truly enjoy.
The last few months of 2008 were pretty distracting what with a pivotal election and the iphone, which I used to follow the election and politics as often as I could during my waking hours. Took me away from the reading time I had on the train.
Now things are a bit quieter, and it is time to get back to reading. I was not sure what I would start reading though. These were the choices (as seen in the picture below)....

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk

These are all very good books. My pick to read was "The Great War For Civilisation" by Robert Fisk. This is an author signed copy from my friend Dan. It is a huge book about 700 pages. I am on page 60 now. And I am already hooked. I hope to be able to post small synopsis of each chapter as I finish it. The Publisher's Weekly got it right I think. Here is what they have to say..

Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description—he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years—that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement.

So how about you folks? What are you reading? Any new year resolutions?

The Edge of Heaven

Life is all about coincidences isn’t it? About paths that cross or almost don’t, separated by mere whiskers of chance or often cross too late. There are ample hints of that and then some in the German born Turkish director Fatih Akin’s feature “The Edge of Heaven”. Coincidences are a valuable tool in the hands of a director, in one less accomplished they risk being trite but not so in this movie. Here an exploration of cross cultural bonds including the sameness that binds us and the differences that set us apart is done in a manner that is human, appealing, will bowl you over and yet it is done with almost an air of distance. I do not use word detachment, there isn’t any in this wonderful human drama that encompasses two nations Turkey and Germany which have many ties. Juxtaposed against the way Turkey had been rebuffed for its entry to the EU and Germany’s discomfort with its own Turkish minority this movie will feel very relevant to our times and likely stand it’s test too.

I liked that Akin does not come out for one versus the other it is likely born of his presence in dual worlds and cultures an experience a lot of us could use.

In a nutshell this film to quote the NYTime’s A.O. Scott is about..

There are six principal characters in “The Edge of Heaven”: two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son, all arranged in more or less symmetrical pairs. In the course of this extraordinary film by the German writer-director Fatih Akin (which won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year) children are lost, lost parents are never found, and generational and geographical distances grow wider.

I loved the camera work, it has done a great job of recording the myriad human emotions on the actors and also set up the moody feel that pervades this movie. I loved how it began with the camera panning across the dusty path of ground, a gas station that a car has pulled up at. Heck I thought it could be some place in Texas. But it was Turkey with the character Nejat (Baki Davrak) on his way to meet his father (as we later find out). There is a conversation here where the store attendant upon being asked by Nejat about the Turkish music playing, is told it is a local singer who “died young ..just like you”. The look that passes across Nejat’s face is it one of fear? Nejat who teaches German lit at a university in Germany is well portrayed as a guy who seems at ease in this world of two cultures. And perhaps the only time I saw a look of real joy on his face was when he walks in to a German bookstore in Istanbul. The rest of the movie we sense a wariness and a weariness to him.

The second scene is in Bremen, Germany where an older man Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) is walking the streets in a flat cap sizing up the prostitutes along this street with its brightly painted houses. He picks Yeter (Nursel Kose) a Turkish woman working as a prostitute and after a couple of visits offers her a deal to pay her the same amount that she makes, his condition being she stay and sleep only with him. Yeter has little choice accosted as she is on the bus by a pair of Turkish men for bringing dishonor to Islam. Nejat meets Yeter at his dad Ali’s place. She has a daughter back in Turkey that she supports but has told her she works in a shoe store. Yeter meets an untimely death.. a sad accidental event at the hands of Ali, something that the viewer is forewarned with a caption at the start of that chapter of the movie.

While one might argue that letting the user know about this before hand would take away from the dramatic effect of the event, but it does not and this technique is used once again to great effect as yet another life is lost aimlessly at the hand of a child holding a weapon.

Shades of the movie babel? I was reminded of that after that scene but there is also the chronologically disordered way events unfold in the movie, some may find it confusing but I thought it served a very good purpose, it kept you thinking about what was happening.

The move shifts to Istanbul where Nejat has come with the aim of locating Yeter’s daughter, who her relatives have lost track of. Turns out Yeter’s daughter, Ayten played to great effect by Nurgul Yesilcay with her delicate looks yet an angry, forceful undercurrent has fled to Germany to escape arrest by Turkish authorities for her involvement with a radical group. Penniless and with no place to go she meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) who is trying to find meaning in her life. She takes Ayten in to her home watched over by Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) and Ayten and Lotte become lovers. Ayten applies for asylum is denied and she is deported back to Turkey. Lotte much to the concern of her mother follows in an attempt to help Ayten. Lotte stays with Nejat as a tenant after putting up a sign at his bookstore (right above the spot with Yeter’s picture. Nejat has no recent picture of Ayten in his quest to find her and so uses her mother Yeter’s photo). The irony of this and other moments is conveyed well as being one of lost chances and near misses.

In a tragic episode Lotte dies led down the path by Ayten who sees her in prison and asks her to help retrieve something for her friends. Her grief stricken mother Suzanne arrives in Istanbul and gets in touch with Nejat with whom Lotte had boarded. They are in a way kindred souls, Suzanne is dealing with the loss of a child while Nejat bears the burden of the unsuccessful quest for Yeter’s daughter and that his father was responsible for Yeter’ death. There is this telling scene as he and Suzanne sit for dinner at an Istanbul restaurant of sumptuous Turskish dishes, and they toast.. to death. And the camera draws away to reveal the normal background noise of dinner conversations. Had they made their peace?

As Nejat goes to the seaside village where his father now estranged and deported from Germany has retired. Susanne seeks out Ayten in prison who seems pulverized by the news that she is indirectly responsible for Lotte’s death. The scenes of the grieving mother and her daughter’s girlfriend behind prison glass as Ayten tries to communicate in her broken English, the only word she seems to be able to say is sorry and ask for forgiveness which Susanne does. On release from prison Ayten returns to the book store that Nejat has left in the care of Susanne. And as they leave the store we see them pass the bulletin board without the sign with the picture of Yeter, which Nejat has removed in frustration before he last left the store.

The movie did not tie up any loose ends and I think that was ok. Life is hardly that simple. The movie did a splendid job of exploring the maps of human relationships, between father and sons, mothers and daughters and the forces that draw us close or force us apart.

Akin’s directorial skills were very obvious in some of the scenes I mentioned above, but there were many more. The scene of coffins being loaded off and on planes… Yeter’s journey back home and Lotte’s too.

There is also the scene where Ayten’s accomplices are captured and they shout out their names as the police drag them away, and the neighbors watching applaud. What are they applauding the police or the revolutionaries?

The landscapes of Turkey are well captured including the energy of Istanbul and the musical score I really loved.

I am glad I got to watch this movie, I recently also finished watching “Head-On” and can hardly wait to watch his documentary on the music scene in Istanbul.