In "Melegin dususu" Semih Kaplanoglu hasn't yet moved from metropolis to province of his masterful "Yusuf Trilogy" - yet there is much to be appreciated in this small portrait of a girl wandering around in men's world. A simple, moving story was crumbled by the director, then carefully chosen snippets were picked up, carefully lit + shot, and reassembled partly in a non-chronological way. The final form resembles a palimpsest being read at random, with endless and endlessly seductive static shots glowing on a dark surface, just as in some of the images, Rembrandt-like, the (pieces of) bodies are cut out by light - or eclipsed. Great visuals, indeed. (There were moments when the mediocre transfer appeared to make them even more magical.) Could this be called magical-realistic minimalism ? Does the folkloristic detail in the prologue (for more, see "The Red Right Hand" external review !) have the symbolic meaning of Ariadne's thread ? Or rather of Sisyphus' boulder? Isn't this prologue actually an epilogue? The only thing that I'm sure of is that I consider Kaplanoglu the greatest of a couple of Turkish directors whose work I've come across.
As mentioned above, the transfer on the Vanguard disc - having no menu whatsoever - is far from beautiful ; moreover, the frame was brutally cut on the right, damaging even the subtitles here and there. Nevertheless, my copy is R2-friendly.
As mentioned above, the transfer on the Vanguard disc - having no menu whatsoever - is far from beautiful ; moreover, the frame was brutally cut on the right, damaging even the subtitles here and there. Nevertheless, my copy is R2-friendly.