MUSTANG PROVIDES HOPE FOR GIRLS IN TURKEY’S BACK COUNTRY
Yet another film on the plight of females in Islamic countries, the French film Mustang focuses on the positive more than the negative. With occasional voiceovers from Lale (Günes Şensoy), Turkish-born director Deniz Gamze Ergüven depicts the gap between the traditional roles of females in rural Kastamonu and cosmopolitan Istanbul without identifying Islam as the culprit; feminism is instead considered the force at work. In the beginning, school is out in summertime, and the boy and girl students play together in the waters of the Black Sea. After splashing in the water, they emerge with some girls resting on top of the shoulders of boys as if in a victory parade. When word of the escapade reaches the home of five teens, the suspicion that the girls were pleasuring themselves on the necks of the boys leads to repression: A physician must then determine whether any have lost virginity; and they are ordered never to leave home. (For reasons not specified, the five sisters live with a grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) and Uncle Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan.)) When Lale wants to attend an important soccer game, her uncle says No. But misconduct by fans leads to a decision to have only female spectators, so the girls are eager to go and steal away. When they return, the house is secured with new bars over windows and higher fences to prevent any future exits, and the older women turn the house into a “wife factory” to prepare them for arranged marriages. The eldest, Sonay (Ilayda Akdoğan), already has a boyfriend Ekin (Enes Surum), occasionally sneaks off to make love by the beach, and gets her wish to marry her sweetheart. Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu) is forced to marry Osman (Erol Afsin). Ece (Elit Işcan) commits suicide one day because she cannot stand Erol’s bullying. That leaves Nur (Doğa Zeynep Doğuşlu) and Lale. On Nur’s wedding day, they blockade the house from the inside so that they cannot join the festivities outside, and Lale has a plan to drive her uncle’s car to Istanbul. Whether the plan is carried out provides much suspense as the film ends. The Political Film Society has nominated Mustang as best film on human rights of 2015. MH
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 2 SUPPORTS THE TEA PARTY
Based on the idea that a city is divided into districts under the strict control of President Snow (played by Donald Sutherland), The Hunger Games series has portrayed totalitarian rule primarily for the entertainment of kids, resonating with some of whom grow up in paternalistic authoritarian families. Billed as the “last” in the series, Katniss “Mockingjay” Evergreen (Jennifer Lawrence) and her allies, especially Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), are determined to overthrow Snow. But Snow criticizes the rebels because they “do not share our values,” a line repeated quite often by Barack Obama. That government is evil appears even more clearly at the end when Katniss executes President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), the supposed leader of the rebel alliance, who appears to want to reestablish totalitarian rule. Some sort of democratic rule appears at the end as Katniss, Peeta, and Gale leave the city for the countryside, depicting rural life as free from government influence. Such imagery validates the tea party philosophy, as often has been the case in the end-of-days films that the general public sees but academics dismiss as trash. Yet films have more influence on Generation Y. Suzanne Collins’s novel Mockingjay (2010) was written to show what war is like, but the anti-war theme is trumped by the Tea Party message. MH