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| One of the great pairings in screen history |
I find it funny that one of the best films at this year's Berlin Film Festival, which is being rocked by off screen battles concerning filmmakers and judges taking political stances, is a film about politics crashing down on a family.
This is the story of Derya and Aziz, a couple who get on the wrong side of the Turkish government. She is a well known actress. He is professor and playwright. Not long after their new play opens and Derya ducks out of getting her photo taken with the Govenor of the city, they find the play suspended. Aziz is also essentially removed, along with a lot of other professors, from his teaching position. Does it have to do with the protests going on in the street? Maybe maybe not but it puts a strain on their family and they are forced to move.
Ozgu Namal and Tensu Bicer head a stellar cast in what should be a film that gets lots of Oscar nominations when this hits America later in the year. They pair absolutely nail their roles as the couple who refuse to break under political pressure. They are the center of the film and they keep us watching and full invested even as the not so clear politics get in the way. They are one of the great screen couples, on the order of William Powell and Myrna Loy, of Tracy and Hepburn but with a much more serious edge. We feel their togetherness. We feel their sense of family. It is absolute perfection and it lifts the film up into the strasphere. Even if the rest of the film wasn't so good. The pairing of Namal and Bicer is magnificent alone would be reason enough to see the film. In all seriousness people will be studying their performances and chemistry for decades to come.
The narrative is very good. While politics is the mcguffin that drives the plot, the film's strength is the fact that this is a domestic drama. How does Derya, Aziz and their daughter respond to preassure? This film invesigates it. It's a very modulated exploration that wonderfully doesn't go off the rails into artifical high drama. Director Ilker Catakn keeps it all under control.
If there is any problem with the film it's in the handling of the politics. Wanting to speak to a large audience and wanting to fit into the world today where authoritarian leaders are running regimes that take arbitary action against people they don't like, the reasoning for the retaliation isn't wholly satifying. That would be fine if the film was more of a Kafka like exercise, but the film is much more grounded in the real so it doesn't fully fly. For me it makes a five star film a and four and a something one.
My quibble aside, YELLOW LETTERS is a great film. It is destined for lots of awards and is a must see.
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