Monday 4 April 2011

Bal - Honey

2010 by Semi Kaplanoglu

A young boy, Yousuf, is a stutter and is very very quite. He is open only towards his father, who keeps bees and sells honey for living. Father, hence, spend most of his time in the nearby forests. Yousuf is not even close to his mother. Even in school he is not smart enough to get any recognitions. One day, his father who had left for the forest, doesn't come back. Yousuf is really depressed by the absence of  his father. His mother is also getting really disturbed. Yousuf knows his father's route almost and goes to the forest by himself, in search of his father. He realises that his father is dead.

A story of daily livelihood from a child's perspective. And it is told as if a camera is following the child and his family that it is so realistic that it is so slow. To add more, there are not any kind of emotions or expressions in this working class 'nuclear family'. The result, Bal turns out as a great attempt, but it is a tedious watch. I think it is a good movie, but it is difficult to complete it without ever feeling asleep, especially if you are watching it in the late hours, like me.

The charm of the boy, Yousuf and the charm of the beautiful locales are the big pluses for this movie. But the movie concentrates really on the simple living of a child and his father, in an unbelievable sense of realism, that it gets too slow, painfully slow. Except for the death of the father, there is absolutely no drama at all, happening in this family, which makes this movie, a strange experience.

I cannot think about any other movie, I ever saw, being so calm for its whole length.

Absolutely calm and quite movie. A unique effort, though.