Çogunluk

"Majority" is the latest internationally recognized Turkish movie as it won the Lion of the Future Award at Venice Film Festival. All of the recent renowned Turkish movies like Kosmos, Bal and 3 Monkeys seem to have been recognized because of the fact that because they are simply trying to break with the conventionality. The fact that they are honored internationally does not mean that they were big box office hits. None of these films have been able to compete with the latest comedy potboilers and blockbusting dramas. Why do you think is that? I guess it has so much to do with scanty dialogue,sparse and bare description,long takes,portent silences, highly minimalist marginal story lines, wooden acting that is just trying to be too naturalistic. The average cinema-goer on the street does not like sit and brood before such a piece of celluloid. So there is no way that these movies can be crowd-pleaser no matter how many awards they get. Seren Yüce's Çoğunluk is not different in any way. From its name, you understand that the cinema-maker takes for granted that many people do live and believe as the few larger than life (!) characters in the movie. The story may seem highly realistic and the acting may seem solid indeed but let me clarify what I mean. When the leading actor Mertkan (Bartu Küçükçağlayan) is asked by his girlfriend Gül (Esme Madra) what his wildest dream is he just answers: "You tell,first" and Gül, who studies sociology at a decent university answers : " Find a handsome man and pop the question" To hear such a naïve answer from a sociology student sounds so lame. Plus, Gül is supposed to be a girl of Kurdish extraction. In spite of her brother's heavy accent, she speaks Turkish like somebody who was born in Istanbul. You may presume that there are people like that now. There may be but it sounds weird in a movie in which a dad says ''we are all Turkish and we are all Muslims' Rest assured that only a weird father would want his son to drop school ( even if it's a distance learning program) and join the army to do his military service. We may have our views (justified or not) about different ethnicities because of the shantytowns they built up in beautiful modern cities but again rest assured not each of us think that anyone who comes from Van is a hard-line communist engaged in subversive activities. It's just not that simple. So Majority is actually the story a marginal minority,indeed!