Mar (2012) Reviews

• We desperately need a woman in this house

  elsinefilo2013-06-12

  Caner Erzincan's directorial debut Mar (The Snake) is a stark portrayal of rural life and a vivid insight into the unimaginably poor, helpless and restricted lives. Through the lives of three guys, Mr. Erzincan creates a scathing lampoon of consumer culture and exploitation of labour. Hacı Halil (Yılmaz Şerif) plays an old man who once made his living by smuggling across the Iranian border. Cross-border industry of smuggling fuel and goods is probably the only lucrative business for local Kurds but it's also highly risky because smugglers are sometimes mistaken for terrorists. Hacı lost his leg in his smuggling days. His son Yılmaz (Volga Sorgu Tekinoglu) makes his living by catching snakes sell them for a pittance. The snakes he catches are probably the mainstay of a lucrative pharmaceutical industry but Yılmaz never gets what he really deserves. As much as snake-catching is a decent business, Yılmaz says 'I wish I had a horse, then I would be a smuggler. I would not even get out of my bed for these things 'With the benefit of hindsight, his father retorts 'One dead in a family is one too many.' The little man of the family Güven (Raşit Saraç) , whom everyone calls Gogo collects snails to ease the economic troubles of the family. The children of the village bring their snails to the Çerçi (itinerant seller) to get some plastic pots and pans, dishes, utensils in return. Just as Yılmaz's hard labor is manipulated by the snake buyer, Gogo's hard work is exploited by the Çerçi. Gogo wants to be like Yılmaz catching snakes while Yılmaz wants to engage in smuggling just like once the old man did. The old man, in all his helplessness, tries to keep the family together while he knows exactly what his home lacks; a woman. No local in her right mind would marry a penniless old widower. His last resort is to listen to Dentist Nedim, who is actually a charlatan offering quack cures with his pincers. Nedim is another exploiter. He is there to manipulate people's trust and money. Hacı's hopeless look for a potential wife sets up sharp contrasts with his son Yılmaz's hopelessly romantic, platonic interest in the town dentist. Gogo lacks a mother, Yılmaz is devoid of somebody he loves, Hacı doesn't have anybody to hold on to in his old age. Gogo, Yılmaz and Hacı are like the sequences from the life of the same guy rendered helpless by circumstances. No matter what their names are, no matter how old they are, no matter what they do there will be always somebody to exploit them Erzincan's story is set in Başkale, which is located in south-eastern Turkey in Van Province on the Iranian border. Because of vague impossibilities the movie was filmed in İçeriçumra, Konya. Mr. Erzincan must have picked this place because he studied in a university located in Konya. The change of location did not damage the soul of the movie. The cinematographic beauty of the film makes you feel like you watch a sequence from a documentary. The name of the movie 'Mar' comes from Persian and the word is used by Kurdish people but the language of this movie is in Turkish. Mr. Erzincan says his intention was not to draw attention to Turkish-Kurdish conflict. He meant to tell the story of simple people and I guess he wants to say the language of helplessness, the stark reality of exploitation and the dark truth of loneliness is the same all over the world. Caner Erzincan's Mar was a box Office flop. Mr. Erzincan doesn't seem to care about the profit during the theatrical run but independent filmmakers take their cinematic power from loyal cineastes. Mar may have given a very languorous feeling to some of the cinema-goers who don't really appreciate minimalist art. There may not have been enough publicity around this movie. Limited promotion and attracting low ticket sales in limited number of theatres may have turned this into an underrated gem. I don't know how some of our movies are so hyped up while some others are so downgraded. Mar may not the perfect cinematic experience but it doesn't deserve to be thrown aside.

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