Movie: Three Monkeys — Üç Maymun (2008)

There may not be many people who, although they know Turkey as a name of a nation, have met someone in person from the country. I have fortunately been able to make some Turkish friends. Because of them, I think I was able to gain my own image about the country of Turkey.

Turkish people have a very favorable opinion of Japanese people. Even a young child who has never actually met a Japanese person is taught by their parents, the media, and the society in general that the Japanese are respectable people. Most Westerners can’t tell Japanese and Chinese people apart, but a Turkish person who has really met a Japanese person says they can immediately tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese people. Japanese people tend to think that Turkish people are Islamic and Arabic in culture, but the country their culture is closest to is actually Greece. I have heard my Turkish friends complain that, “Europeans and Americans respect Greeks as the founders of ancient civilization, but look down on us as savage Muslims.” Most people are Muslim, but Islam does not hold a major role in the lives of the majority of the people in Turkey. Instead, they fear and oppose having the small number of fanatic Muslims gaining power and controlling the government.

Because Turkey shares its border with countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria, it wisely tries to maintain a friendly attitude in order to not provoke these countries. However, I think the true desire of the Turkish people is to establish strong relations with Europe and America, and live with Western standards. Turkey and Iran are two of the few countries within the Islam sphere that don’t have Arabic as their first language.

Turkey already economically and politically participates actively as a member of Europe and is classified as part of Europe by the Copenhagen Standard. Turkey government officially thinks of Turkey as a European country, belonging to Europe’s football organization and Olympics committee. Also, Turkey participates in European organizations such as NATO, Council of Europe, Western European Union, South-East European Cooperation Process, Southeast European Cooperative Initiative, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe; it signed the Declaration of Helsinki and has applied for membership in the European Union (EU). A few years ago, my Turkish friend told me about Turkey’s EU application and that there was very strong wariness about Turkey as an Islamic country among Europeans; he complained about the differential treatment by the EU towards Turkey versus other Eastern European nations that were easily admitted to the EU. Istanbul, along with Tokyo, is one of the finalists being considered to host the 2020 Olympics. This is a great opportunity to show that Turkey is a beautiful and respectable country, but it is unfortunate that the unrest in Turkey’s neighbor Syria may negatively affect the selection. Currently, Turkey who does not accept Syria’s behavior is having a skirmish with Syria at the border between Turkey and Syria. Turkey would have wanted to avoid this.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan who made Three Monkeys represents Turkey as a director and his past works have won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival award and Cannes International Film Festival Grand Prix. In particular, he became an international superstar when he won the Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award for Three Monkeys, but, unfortunately, none of his works have been released in Japan. In addition, even though he is a director in his mid-fifties, he is quite handsome and I think he would become popular with Japanese people if he were to be invited to Japan.

In Three Monkeys, politician Servet, driving home while tired from running his election campaign, accidentally hits a pedestrian and keeps driving. Afraid of a scandal, Servet convinces his driver Eyüp to take the blame for his hit-and-run crime in exchange for a monetary reward, so Eyüp is sent to prison. While Eyüp is in prison, his wife Hacer and Servet develop an intimate relationship. Eyüp’s son notices this love affair and the rough storyline of Three Monkeys is the lives of Hacer and Servet turning towards disaster as their relationship becomes serious.

What I thought was interesting when watching this movie is that it is very passive and subdued. There is no animalistic, aggressive violence commonly seen in Western movies. Even though this movie depicts a family crisis, the characters do not raise their voices, nor do they use violence. Everyone looks sad because they suppress their feelings and don’t express themselves. Also, everyone is unhappy in their own way; their foolish decisions pile up and no one seeks a constructive solution. I am urged to call out to them, “Sad? But you cannot blame anyone but you.” The music of an incoming call on the cell phone also sounds sad. It somehow resembles a Japanese enka ballad. Enka music is said to originate from Korea, but I wonder if its ancient origin might possibly be traced back to Turkey. At any rate, a subdued and sad tone is in the air throughout the movie. This director is very popular with Europe and America because of this sad tone is very unique. Although this feeling is similar to what Westerners feel about Japan, this movie is more gloomy and sad.

Another thing Nuri Bilge Ceylan is renowned for is the beauty of his images. Most of this movie is taken in a poor apartment in a poor area in Istanbul, but the cinematography is terrifyingly beautiful. You cannot understand it without actually watching it. It is really regrettable that it has not been released in Japan.

The story of this movie is not particularly noteworthy and it develops undramatically, but it made me want to see more of director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s works. There is a mysterious charm to this movie.

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Movie: Entre les murs – The Class (2008)

Since this movie is the movie adaptation of Paris middle school teacher François Bégaudeau’s book Entre les murs (“within the classroom”) which he wrote based on his own experience, François Bégaudeau also wrote the screenplay and performed as himself in the movie. In addition to his main job as a teacher, his careers include being a rock musician, writer, and rock music critic; after winning a César Award as a scriptwriter, being awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and being nominated for an Academy Award, he has added to his resume a career in the movie industry. After his book became popular, he resigned as a teacher and now seems to be doing writing and movie-related work.

Many different races are mixed in this middle school class that is in the 20th district of Paris where immigrants from a variety of areas coexist. This movie mainly depicts the events that occur over the course of one year within François’s class. François is a French teacher that teaches authentic French to students who mostly don’t speak French as their native language. In terms of the French ability of the children, they have no problem with daily conversation, but their verb conjugation is incorrect and they do not sufficiently understand abstract vocabulary or subjunctive mood that is mainly used in writing. Many of the students are black children of immigrants, but their homelands vary—Mali and Morocco in Africa, the Caribbean, etc.—so their cultural backgrounds are diverse; we can’t simply say “immigrant children” or “black immigrant”. Small fights between these children frequently happen.

This movie received the highest accolades at distinguished film festivals and, as a movie about a school with teacher-student relations, I expected a poignant drama of an enthusiastic schoolteacher, but it was actually different when I watched it. This movie does not discuss an ideal education, does not praise either the teacher or the students, and is not a social issue drama depicting the children of immigrants. If entering with such expectations, you will leave with them unfulfilled. Various problems happen one after another and François works hard to respond to them, but he isn’t necessarily able to solve the problems well. This movie simply depicts various incidents—many arguments and conversations between students and the teacher, parents and the teacher, and among teachers—and then the school year just ends. So then some may wonder, what is good about this movie?

First, why did François Bégaudeau write his original Entre les murs? It is because of the inconsolable present conditions of his career as a teacher. A job is needed in order for anyone to survive, so he became a teacher. Since his parents were also teachers, teaching was a familiar occupation. However, a teacher in France is not very well paid, is not thanked by students and parents even when working very hard, and every day is spent responding to students who constantly talk back. He likes his students and seems to have enthusiasm for his job, but nevertheless, if I borrow his words, teaching is “the saddest occupation.” Being a middle school teacher is enormously hard work. Nobody looks down on a teacher (I hope), and everyone thinks that someone must work as a middle school teacher. However, there may not be many people who are willing to be a middle school teacher. It is a problem that, even though people recognize it is an important job, only a few people are excitedly applying for these jobs.

Then why did director Laurent Cantet want to make this book into a movie? Like François Bégaudeau, Laurent Cantet’s parents were also teachers. He had direct knowledge about school teachers and he recognized that education had a significant role in preparing a child for the real world; but he was also aware that, if the education system did not function well, many students fell through the system. For Laurent Cantet who thought about the present condition of education theoretically, François Bégaudeau’s book that concretely conveyed the viewpoint of children and the life of the classroom stimulated his creative mind and I think this was his main motive for making this movie about education. Laurent Cantet’s theme is probably something like, “Education should give children opportunities, but has it become a place that instead narrows the opportunities for children?” For example, a male student who accidentally injures a classmate is expelled for this incident since he is seen as a problem child among teachers, and a female student whose grades are suffering mutters, “I really don’t want to go to vocational school.” I am not very familiar with France’s educational system, but it seems that vocational school is a hopeless dead-end for students that are sent there because of their bad grades.

Finally, why did this undramatic, documentary-like, subdued production unanimously win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and receive overwhelming praise? This movie is not an exceptional movie, but I think it is because an important theme is depicted honestly and modestly. Any citizen watching this movie would have received some education so they are aware that education is important and that the education system is not perfect under the current conditions; but not many movies about education are made because it is not easy to make the educational problem into a dramatic movie. Occasionally, an exceptionally enthusiastic schoolteacher and their exceptional influence as a teacher may be dramatically depicted. Ordinary children and a professional teacher from poor neighborhoods in Paris were chosen from the audition to depict reality beyond the performance by actors. It was actually quite convincing.

This movie raises questions about education, and the main characters the child actors play in this movie should be problem children, but there is a hopeful twinkle in the eyes of the children appearing in this movie. Perhaps while they were involved in the making of this movie as main characters, they started to feel, “I didn’t know film making would be this fun!” or, “How joyful to become the lead role and use my own mind and heart!” Therefore, all the children playing problem children are cute. It may have been slightly unplanned by the director, but the twinkle of these children may be the reason for the refreshing feeling left after watching the movie.

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Movie: Vals Im Bashir — Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Watching this movie together with Beaufort, a 2007 Israeli film, may help us understand the complicated state of affairs of the Lebanon War. Waltz with Bashir depicts the beginning of the Lebanon War while Beaufort depicts the final withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon in 2000.

In 1982, the Israeli army invaded their neighbor Lebanon. Because large-scale Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon became hiding places for anti-Israel terrorists, the strategic intention was to eradicate these terrorists. In addition, Israel intended to establish a pro-Israeli regime in Lebanon by supporting Bashir, the charismatic leader of the Christian Phalange party; at the time, the Phalange party and an Islamic group that was supported by Syria were competing for power in Lebanon. However, even though Bashir was elected in the Lebanon presidential election, he was assassinated immediately after. The Phalange party assumed this assassination to be an act by Palestinian guerillas so they carried out a massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel faced global criticism for a long time as the mastermind of this massive killing, but this movie reveals a new viewpoint of this incident.

This movie’s main character and director, Ari Folman, was 19 years old at the time of these events. Although he should have been in the frontline of the Israeli army when invading Lebanon, the movie begins with him realizing that he has no memories of those times. The memory gradually comes back by interviewing some of his comrades in arms and superior officers during that time and the journalists who reported the scene immediately after the massacre. He begins to understand that the loss of his own memory is because of the extreme horror of the scene he watched back then.

Director Ari Folman expresses his messages very candidly and directly. It is as if he is trying to prevent the audience from getting the wrong message that could result from ambiguity or ambivalence. I feel his passion and sense of purpose like, “I really want to tell this story and for it to be understood,” in this movie.

The first message is that the interference by Israel in Lebanon affairs via their support of Bashir was a mistake. The title of this movie is “Waltz with Bashir.” Waltz is a kind of dance, but it can carry the subtext of “conspiring with someone with an ulterior motive.” Although Israel may have intended to protect the peace of Israel by having Bashir establish a pro-Israeli nation, the failure of this interference with another country’s affairs resulted in global anti-Israeli feelings of distrust for the next 30 years and left Israel with a big burden.

The second message is that most Israel soldiers did not participate in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, nor did they know what happened. This cannot be categorically dismissed as an “Israeli excuse.” If he as an artist doesn’t let the world know the truth that he knows, the deaths of those who died in the Lebanon War—whether they are Palestinian refugees or young Israeli soldiers—will be in vain. Director Ari Folman does not talk about which side was righteous. In the movie, he even accuses an Israeli commander who knew what was happening for not quickly putting an end to it. His true intention is that, when we truly know and understand what happened in the past, we can begin to start a better future.

His third message is an anti-war conviction from the bottom of his heart. The director was drafted and sent to Lebanon when he was 19 years old. Surrounded by many fellow soldiers and confident of his safety within a tank, he was excited to go to the beautiful country of Lebanon and charming city of Beirut. However, this excited feeling was shattered the moment the war started. Nevertheless, his romanticism as a young man doesn’t yet vanish and he thinks he can get revenge by making his ex-girlfriend feel guilty for dumping him if he were to die in war. This movie transmits the bitter feelings of the director that looks back and realizes that these juvenile feelings of romanticism were foolish.

The fourth message is related to the third message, but it is that invading a foreign country is very foolish and you can’t win. The director barely returned from Lebanon alive and, even though he nearly died and many refugees were slaughtered, many young people of the same generation in his homeland Israel that didn’t go to war get drunk to rock music, dance at bars, and enjoy life with a feeling of, “War? What’s that?” There are the same feelings of estrangement and disappointment that American and Soviet Union soldiers felt after returning from the hell of Vietnam, Iran, or Afghanistan. People resist with all of their might when their home country is invaded by another country. However, people in the homeland hardly understand what their soldiers are doing in a foreign country so it is difficult to sympathize with these soldiers; regardless of the military power the army may have or how exhausted the invaded country may be, it is frightening for soldiers to invade a foreign country and nobody there welcomes invading soldiers. In the end, the invader will never win.

This movie is an animated documentary. I think there was no other option to choose to depict this theme. It would be impossible to shoot the movie in Lebanon due to the current state of affairs there and it would be impossible to try to reproduce Beirut from thirty years ago. Beirut was beautiful before this destruction and a well-known tourist city, so anyone would know immediately that it was fake if they attempted to reproduce it. Animation was also a good choice for a medium due to the horrifying events depicted in the movie. In addition, beautiful music, like a gem, effectively accents important scenes.

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Movie: Der Baader Meinhof Komplex – The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)

1960 through the 1970s was a time of global disturbances—the American-Soviet Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Palestine refugee problem, China’s Cultural Revolution, Algeria’s independence, the South American Dirty War, and the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.—but I wonder how many people today remember the terrorism in Europe by the Red Army Faction from Germany. Around 1970, one-third of young Germans in their twenties sympathized with the Red Army Faction, and the uprising of this youth was a great threat to the West Germany government. The youth supporting the Red Army are now in their 60s and 70s. Young Germans who had a strong sense of justice and received a higher education became involved with the left-wing movement during the 1960s, burning with idealism; in the 1970s, the movement split between non-violent and armed resistance. This movie The Baader Meinhof Complex depicts the process of radicals of the Red Army rapidly transforming into a terrorist group. It is not depicted in the movie, but the Berlin Wall collapses in the ‘80s and people eventually became aware that the socialist system was a failure.

Because this movie depicts many young people from the Red Army as well as the authorities that countered them over a 10-year period, violent acts occur one after another in the movie and the depictions of individuals are superficial. Moreover, the movie just depicts the facts with a documentary touch and the most important questions of, “Why did the German youth of the ‘60s join the armed Red Army Faction or support it? Why did the Red Army that had such strong support collapse?” are not depicted. Also, this movie is a little difficult to understand for people who don’t really know German history or don’t remember that extremists exist in developed countries like Germany. This movie assumes that the audience knows history and does not explain the details at all. I investigated some of the background to this movie.

The movie begins with the Shah of Iran visiting West Berlin in 1967. A peaceful protest demonstration led by students and Iranians who had fled because of the Shah’s dictatorship changes into a riot when a police officer shoots and kills a student. Ulrike Meinhof was a famous left-wing journalist, but she was shocked by this case and became more radical in her ideology. Her husband was also an editor at a left-wing magazine, but he opposed violent acts so the two divorced.

Gudrun Ensslin, daughter of a pastor, was a bright honors student. She was working toward her doctorate at one of Germany’s top universities—the Free University of Berlin—and hoped to posthumously publish the manuscripts of her fiancé’s father, a former Nazi. Like her own father who possessed sympathy to social problems as a pastor, she believed in moderate reform through the Congress, but her life changed when she met Andreas Baader. She abandoned her fiancé and their child and eloped with Andreas.

Andreas Baader dropped out of high school and was the kind of man who repeatedly committed every crime. He was a unique individual among the radicals, many of whom had a background of high education, but he was strongly charismatic and he and Gudrun Ensslin led the radicals to terrorism and criminal acts.

Ensslin and Baader were arrested for setting a department store on fire. Meinhof visited the imprisoned Ensslin for the news story and the two immediately had a mutual understanding. Meinhof, Ensslin, and Baader founded the Baader-Meinhof Group, which later developed into the Red Army Faction. After staying and receiving military training at the guerilla training camp of the Palestinian Liberation Organization based in Jordan in those days, they succeeded in acts of terrorism and bank robberies to fund their activity, one after another, and became a great threat to the government of West Germany. The leaders of the Red Army Faction including Meinhof, Ensslin, and Baader were arrested in 1971, but through meetings with their lawyers Klaus Croissant and Siegfried Haag, they trained Red Army soldiers while still imprisoned and brought up the second and third generations of Red Army Faction activists.

The next generations of the Red Army Faction rapidly became more radical, kidnapping and hijacking for the sake of the release of Baader and the others. Famous acts of terrorism included the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli team member from the Olympic Village of the Munich Olympics in 1972, the occupation and blowing up of the German embassy in Sweden in 1975, and the assassination of Siegfried Buback and Jürgen Ponto, the kidnapping and killing of businessman Hanns Martin, and the hijacking of Lufthansa Airlines Flight 181 in 1977. The level of violence of the Red Army reached its peak in the late 1970s; this series of terrorist acts is called the “German Autumn” and the Red Army lost the last of its support from citizens. Albrecht, a member of the Red Army, participated in the terrorist act against Dresdner Bank—the failed kidnapping and subsequent murder of the banks’ President Jürgen Ponto, who was Albrecht’s father’s friend as well as her godfather. “Black September”—a Palestinian armed group that was expelled from Jordan, moved to Lebanon, and became more violent—allied with and fought alongside the Red Army Faction.

arabian_map_smThe leader of the Lufthansa Airlines Flight 181 hijacking, a “Black September” soldier, demanded of the West Germany government that eleven Red Army Faction first generation members be released, as well as $150 million. When Palestinians had become refugees, international opinion—especially Arab countries—became sympathetic to Palestinians and their liberation movement, but these sympathies began to shift following this incident. The Palestinian Liberation Organization already lost support from Jordan and Syria. The hijacked aircraft was passed around to Larnaca (Republic of Cyprus), Bahrain, and Dubai, but after Dubai, no other airport in the Arabian Peninsula provided permission for the plane to land. After having to make an emergency stop in Aden, Yemen when the fuel was all used up, the hijacked plane eventually landed in Mogadishu, Somalia where it is apprehended by the German government. Immediately after this hijacking failure, the first generation Red Army Faction leaders in jail committed suicide.

I think the new postwar generation after World War II was trying to find a much-needed solution to the problems left behind or even created by their parents’ generation in those days, and turned to left-wing ideology to do so. However, the movement that began with idealism was gradually forced to choose between violent or non-violent methods. Resorting to violence may have looked like a quick and easy way to get a solution, but it was not a lasting solution.

The director of this movie was Uli Edel. Ulrike Meinhof was performed by Martina Gedeck who also starred in Mostly Martha (Catherine Zeta-Jones starred in the Hollywood remake No Reservations) and The Lives of Others. The movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but the prize that year ended up going to Japan’s Departures.

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