Reviews

I could never get into the movie. I always thought "What is smart&calm David doing with this lolita Amy? How on earth they could be married?". Then every men started to grope Amy. At first she gets upset, but then she walks naked in front of the windows to make herself seen naked by them. Then enjoys the rape. I went "What the hell?". Then a low-IQ man kills a young woman. David decides to protect him and our cool David turns into a real gunner... In 1970s, if you said "I will show more and more violence, sex, drugs, mental sickness, etc", then you were welcomed as a "great director"... Peckinpah, Scorsese (Taxi Gunner), Bertolucci (Last Rape in Paris), Coppola (Bull-Chopping Redux), all the same...

"I don't want to believe. I want to know". That's one of the most famous quotes of Carl Sagan. But Robert Zemeckis is trying to make us "believe", instead of "know".

Zemeckis is a typical "fairy-tale-teller" director. He always reflected an imaginary, fictitious "American Dream" in his movies, just like his master, Steven Spielberg. Those films with lots of cliches, were beloved much. They were in the genre of "feel-good" with flat happy-endings, with messages like "any ordinary man could do anything (with faith)", "believe in yourself", "believe in dreams", etc. Lots of belief.

Vega is a star 26 light-years away from Earth. Nazis transmitted a TV signal in 1936 Olympics. That signal never went anywhere outside Germany but for a moment "Let's believe" and say "it went to the space". You expect that signal arrived at Vega in 1962. If they "retweeted" it immediately, it would return home in 1988. But it returns in 1997. So, the aliens of Vega waited for 9 earth-years time. A super-advanced civilization capable to build up time-space-travel-capsules, capable to use three-dimensional informations, waits for 9 earth-years. Why? Drumlin just says "signal amplification" but it is clear that it will not take 9 years for Vega aliens to strengthen up the signal. For billions of years, they've brought someone from other planets to Vega and then "reposted" them with no evidence left behind. Why? What kind of communication is that? It looks like Vega aliens are really making prunk by saying: "First we sent you some useless prime numbers, then we sent you the plan of a vehicle available in the entire universe - except your Earth. Now we're sending you back but we make sure that nobody will believe you, good luck".

Actually, those are "cold war legends" reflecting the "alien paranoia" which was derived from the "Soviet paranoia" in 1920s. We still haven't seen any aliens visiting us in a crowded environment. In 1938, on a famous radio broadcast, it was said that aliens had landed and invaded New Jersey. It was a radio play. Since then, many people believe that aliens secretly visit Earth. These are just beliefs, dreams, spiritual experiences. Zemeckis repeats this cold-war myth to tell an "American Dream" in which science and religion live together in peace.

Hadden easily decrypts three-dimensional texts that "the best code-breakers" cannot. "The best code-breakers" are even unable to think three-dimensional. Really?

A former astronaut, now major, who is considered the best candidate for the mission, "unexpectedly" changes his mind, just because his children said "Daddy, don't go". Really?

Candidates for a scientific mission, are put through a interview about religion. Really?

Governments spend 400-500 billion dollars for a capsule, the most expensive thing Homo Sapiens has ever built, "for the history of the history", but they don't spend a single penny about the security, so a fanatic can easily enter the facility and blow everything up. Really?

Why would you set up the capsule in the open air with thousands of curious people walking around, when you know that a huge, enormous amount of energy will be released? Imagine the folks at CERN did something like this!

Where in the wormhole Eleanor did make-up? When she landed in Vega, her face looks like she's just visited her make-up artist. How does she breath on Vega? Is there enough oxygen in Vega air?

Aliens of Vega do not know who invented that travel capsule. They are just fascinated by Homo Sapiens. For a such advanced civilization capable of using three-dimensional texts and travelling through the entire universe, why should it be astonishing that Homo Sapiens are capable of beautiful dreams and horrible nightmares?

Three stars, just for Jodie Foster, the beginning and the wormhole sequences. Foster really gives a good performance and looks like a post-modern Joan of Arc. No other actress would have suited this role in 1990s. It is also nice to see a 13-year-old Jena Malone as Jodie's childhood.

If you want to see some originality, you have to watch old movies, that's for sure.

First half of the movie is about an actor building up the cast for a play about "The Passion of Christ". Each actor joining the play has a unique story: The man who makes voice-over for porn movies, the woman who has an unhappy marriage and a monoton life, the girl who wants to prove herself as a good actor because she is shown as a simple sex object without any acting talent, the man who makes voice-over for documentaries but does not like it... That life-documentary scene was simply genius. It is a great idea to use such a scene in such a film. It makes you deeply think about life, birth and death, before you get into that play about The Passion.

New translations of the Talmud is added to the text of the play. Five actors stage the play as an "outdoor live-action". That theatre audience like it a lot, so do I. It has always has been fun to see alternative stories, different perspectives, because they make us like "Are you sure? Think once more". The life of Jesus Christ has always been a mystery already. There are too many myths about him, but scientific approaches, as reflected in this movie, are very engrossing. The movie also shows that fanaticism never ends. Some theatre spectators are pure fanatic, they believe that is not acting, it is real. The movie claims that people's mind has not actually changed much. 2000 years ago we believed the earth was flat, we believed in evil spirits, we were fanatics. Now we believe in different things but we are still fanatics.

The second half, after the play, includes a huge criticism about today's world. You see Canada's system of health and system of justice do not work so well. You see how people become a celebrity with lies and tricks. Appalache segment is the best one, it was "pure 80s" and very-well-linked to the story. Daniel protests the Appalache crew, destroys their equipment, just as Jesus Christ is believed to destroy idols in a temple. In the play, Daniel plays Jesus Christ, Mireille plays Mary Magdalene. So, Daniel saves Mireille both in the play and in real life. That parallelism was a joy to watch.

After Daniel comes close to the death, he starts to behave as Jesus Christ. He preaches to the people in the subway. At the end, he gets his own crucifixion in a Jewish hospital.

Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of The Christ" and Pier Pasolini's "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" were page-to-page shootings of Gospels, they were not very creative, you knew what will happen next. Martin Scorcese's movie "The Last Temptation of Christ" was a "what if..." movie, but not good enough. This one is simply great, original, provocative, scientific, emotional. It tells many things with clever references in two hours.

A guy is having mental issues, he does not like his job, he does not have any friends or a family, he is unhappy, he cannot sleep... A doctor advises him to join a therapy session of people with cancer - people who will die soon. "Go there and see the real pain". This looks like a sentence of a "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari-type" philosopher, not a sentence of a medical doctor. Our unnamed guy goes there, sees much more unhappy people than him and he likes to be there - just like Marla Singer. Marla is there just because she does not have anything fun to do. She does not have a disease. She is another completely lost character. So, we have two anti-heros in the lead roles, and that makes this film "unique". The movie symbolizes the beginning of a new era. We had always seen a "hero" and an "anti-hero" before, in all Hollywood productions, including Fincher's previous movies. Edward Norton never stops narrating and he always sounds in the same tone, you don't hear a single emotional change. On a plane, he meets "Tyler Durden", who shows him "another way to solve his problems". After a bar visit, they fight and they both like that. They build up a "fight club", many anti-heros join them. Then they begin to go beyond borders, not killing people but destroying some "capitalist buildings" who they think as "devils". Kicking each other, breaking noses and bones, blowing up banks, making stupid prunks to foreign people will not/cannot bring peace to this world. The movie really glorifies violence and sado-masochism. Marla Singer, the main female character in the movie, is written as a sex object of this male-macho world, unfortunately. If you are watching "Fight Club" as the first time in 2022, you will see that Tyler Durden character is very predictable, because there are lots of alter-ego movies made in 2000s. Tyler is the alter-ego of our unnamed guy. He is the one who easily does things which our unnamed guy can't dare to do. That's actually scientific. Every person under heavy pressure/unhappiness, can easily develop a secondary personality to make himself feel better, creating "virtual revanchists" or "a virtual happy world" inside him. Science of psychology says that. Because for a movie,using a scientific fact is not enough for success. Tyler steals body fats of women, makes soaps, and then sell them to women and he is another "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari-type" philosopher loaded with violence. "Forget everything", "Get rid of property", "Open the gas, blow up your house, let it go"... Could those really be the real solutions of people's unhappiness? I don't think so. We all need things, cars, houses, "property". I don't think the movie really criticised "capitalist figures" whose names are mentioned in the movie. I think the movie just advertised them. Advertising is advertising, there is not a bad advertising. Another non-convincing part was that The Club has many members in the police department. Tyler is not arrested even though he explained everything in detail to the police. The Club members just dress up like waiters, they kick the prosecutor a few times in the toilet and then the case is closed. That is like a fairy-tale with anarcho-violence added. The final sequence is the death of Tyler, rise of "the real" guy. He shot himself in the head but he does not die, his alter-ego dies. Really? Then blow up the banks, hug with Marla, let the happy ending come. The movie is one of the most overrated films in the history. I haven't read the book, but I know the message of the book. The writer, Chuck Palahniuk says "It offers people the idea that they can create their own lives outside the existing blueprint for happiness offered by society". There is no reason to agree with this, because "their own lives" is nothing beyond a macho-male-violence world with some cheap freedom speeches.

It is said that the movie is based on a true story. It was actually a mixture of several stories. Director Sinan Cetin stated that the film brought some sections from (his father) Mehdi Cetin's life to the big screen. Mehdi Cetin worked as a customs guard for 35 years at Soviet Union, Iranian and Syrian borders of Turkey. The character of "Mehdi" is played by Kemal Sunal, who was the most-beloved Turkish comedian.

But those true-stories are modified, highly exaggerated and became a real cartoon in the hands of Sinan Cetin, who never managed to make a good movie after Cicek Abbas (1982).

Like most of Turkish liberals, Sinan Cetin's political attitude is just criticising everything done in 1923-1950, when Turkey was under a single-party administration. Those criticisers do not know the difference between "bureaucracy" and "fascism". For them, every ban is directly fascism. If a few bans really meant fascism, then we would have 200 fascist countries on the world. Those criticisers do not know that fascism needs a special economical base, some colonies to grow up. Turkey had never such base like Germany, Italy and Japan.

In the characters of Mehdi and mostly Mahmut (his assistant), we see a poor caricature of bureaucratic strictness. Mahmut is played by Kemal Sunal's son Ali Sunal.

Ankara says "The borderline will pass through the village". Actually, solution in such a case is so simple. Before the border was set up, "possible outsiders" could easily move "inside", to a house of their relatives and then maybe build up a new house. The school or the teacher also would be transferred inside easily. But Sinan Cetin claims it was impossible and he always says "Oh my God, those were terrible times"... Also, no state on this world could do such a thing. Because the other side of that border belonged to another independent state, Syria, in 1948. So if you divide such a village into two, you also have to make a diplomacy with the Syrian government at that time. Will Syria accept them as Syrian citizens or not? They just can't be left there like wild animals. The movie does not deal with it. It is a cartoon already.

At first, we see Mehdi returning to his village to do his job. It is a ridiculous scene like the next ones. Sinan Cetin probably thinks every village in Anatolia had a band to welcome state officers in 1940s. Although they are shown with "modern bands", villagers are shown as complete ignorants who love idle talk.

In the scene at 7th minute, we see four villagers shown as talking in a language other than Turkish, probably Kurdish, maybe Arabic. But it is definitely not Kurdish or Arabic, because they don't really speak, they just make noises, they growl. It is a really humiliating scene for Kurdish-speaking and Arabic-speaking people. When they see Manager Mehdi coming, they immediately begin to sing an anthem about Ankara, Turkish capital. Don't ask how they learnt that anthem. After Mehdi passed, they go back to growling.

The border post is also ridiculous. Border posts are established a few miles inside the border, for the security - Not just exactly on the border, not on "the ground zero" like in this movie.

Some scenes are very short, about 10-20 seconds followed with a black fade out, and does not anything valuable to the story. They look like "deleted scenes" inserted into a movie. Amateurish editing.

Opening of the customs/border post is another ridiculous scene. There is a banner with "Yasasin sinir!" (Long live the border!) written on it. What a ridiculous slogan. No officer would write or allow such a banner. Then a child speaks to the villagers, reads a poetry. Why? It is not a festival of the children, it is not April 23rd, it is about customs, border. No officer would allow such a thing. The poetry is actually two mixed poetries, mixed in the script. These are all Sinan Cetin's comedy fantasies and it is not clever. It is just cartoonish.

At 40th minute, director Sinan Cetin makes a cameo as a shepherd. He also doesn't really speak, he just make noises. That's the second growling scene which we were supposed to laugh at. Then shepherd starts to speak English. Don't ask how he learnt it. He insults and he says that national customs are all very unnecessary. And that's the political message of the movie. Sinan Cetin wants a world without customs, he claims that people can live without customs. Well, that sounds like a communist ideal, but no. What Sinan Cetin wants is a huge formation with all countries under the same flag, no customs, open-door, free trade. Just as European Union itself. The movie called "Propaganda" is actually a propaganda of European Union. Of course, you can criticise politics. But it is very cartoonish to claim that "East/Turkey/one place is %100 hell, West/Europe/the other place is %100 heaven".

Manager Mehdi chases sheeps which pass the border... Mahmut cannot write a simple permit in a few minutes (because he tries to write a long epic tale)... Yasar, the only villager who has a passport, continually goes forward and back at the customs... An officer from the ministry brings an award to Mehdi with a band playing anthems... Cemil, who is deeply in love with his step-sister Filiz, suddenly make peace with Adem, Filiz's lover... Too much non-sense.

At the end, Mehdi resigns, gives up his "heavy-bureaucracy" work. He and his best friend, their families, altogether come back to "their country" with breaking borders. Such a thing could not happen. As I wrote before, there won't be such a division, because the possible outsiders would move inside before the customs is opened. It seems clear that Sinan Cetin used his father's memories, modified them, exaggerated them, just to insult Ismet Inonu era, not to criticise it objectively. If his father was really against Inonu administration, he would not have worked at the customs for 35 years.

Many films about Jewish Genocide were made and most of them were acclaimed by spectators and critics. But movies about Armenian Genocide/Relocation/Meds Yeghern, whatever you call it, were very rare and none of them became successful. Award-winner filmmaker Fatih Akin's project had raised expectations for a good movie about 1915. And it wouldn't be one-sided: A Turkish director living in German and an Armenian writer from "diaspora" were together. As a Turkish-Armenian joint project, "The Cut" could have let 1915 really questioned by people, instead of insults from both sides.

Fatih Akin presents the main character as a person who cannot speak. The stab wound in the throat of blacksmith Nazaret Manukyan from Mardin, seems to symbolize the traumas inherited by today's Armenians. Nazaret can't speak, he can't explain clearly what happened to him. If you can't explain it properly, you can't talk about a genocide against your own people. After all, "There is no such thing as genocide", right? It seems like Fatih Akin is making a clever reference in this way?

Dedicating his film to Hrant Dink, a murdered Armenian writer, Fatih Akin makes Armenian characters speak English, not Armenian. In Elia Kazan's film "America America", which Fatih Akin sees as an inspiration, Greeks spoke English. In order to facilitate arousing international interest, Fatih Akin "saved" many people, especially the Americans, from the "trouble" of reading subtitles by making Armenians speak English. It would be better if realism was preserved. But luckily, Arabs speak Arabic, Turks speak Turkish, Cubans speak Spanish in the movie.

Fatih Akin has had a close relationship with Martin Scorsese in recent years. As they do film restorations together, they also exchange ideas about scripts. Mardik Martin, who is Fatih Akin's script partner here, had a hand in Scorsese films in the gangster-adventure genre. As a result, "The Cut" was born as an "adventure film" based on 1915. Fatih Akin describes his style as a "western".

Fatih Akin loves road stories. Here, we have much more longer roads than "Gegen die Wand" (2004) and "Auf der anderen Seite" (2007). He drags Nazaret Manukyan from Asia to the Caribbean and from there to America.

Why not a historical-drama movie with Armenian folk music, but an adventure with rock music? Why didn't this movie turn out to be a very good movie, even though it has a very good cinematography and an international cast?

I do not know from where Fatih Akin, who is said to have researched 1915 a lot, got his knowledge of Ottoman history. But there is no such thing like "Ottomans turned the minorities into enemies overnight after they desperately entered the war in 1914". The Armenian issue had been going on since the 1800s. Armenians, who were presented as minority, were not "minority" either. Populations of different ethnic groups were almost equally distributed in Anatolia at that time.

The movie portrays Ottoman soldiers as brutals: They don't do what is requested in return for a bribe, they just put the bribe in their pocket, their hands are always with whips, they like to "work" without wasting bullet, they always talk rude, they love to rape a woman, etc... It is said that "Life is shades of gray", but the Ottoman soldiers in the film are completely black - Purely evil. It is useless to claim that there was not a single conscientious character among those soldiers. It is too much to differentiate the concepts of good and bad, it is very cartoonish. Luckily, Nazaret Manukyan is not portrayed as "a white spoon out of milk", he is a jealous man.

Mehmet, the character played by Bartu Kucukcaglayan, is the most remarkable characterization of "The Cut" and Fatih Akin's second success after the main character who cannot speak. He is released from a prison because they want him to kill some "Armenian traitors". Mehmet is poor, a miserable. He is considered to be ready to kill people for some money. Mehmet is not a "sinless white" or a "brutal black", he is one of "the shades of gray", he has made many mistakes in this life and his heart, his conscience hurts and he saves Nazaret. If you ask "Are there no good Turks in the movie?", the answer is Mehmet at first.

Mehmet begs for forgiveness by giving his boots to Nazaret, who will embark on a long journey. That scene is very important, the "political smell" of the movie is felt here. While shooting "The Cut", Fatih Akin aimed to make a film with style, "a 1915-western", he also adopted a conciliatory political stance. According to Fatih Akin; to make 1915 be talked in society, we need to feel sorry for this Armenian character, Nazaret, by looking at the difficulties he suffered during his long journey. After all, we have to feel sorry for 1915 as well, and apologize for it - Like everything will be alright if you apologize. However, there are more important things than our personal mercies. It is necessary to look at the subject scientifically, not from the sense of mercy of ordinary individual people. What was aimed and achieved with the 1915 events? That's a question which must be answered in a movie about 1915.

Nazaret goes to Aleppo in search of his twin daughters. While he is in Aleppo, World War comes to an end. In the scene of Turks leaving Aleppo, the Armenians are so enraged that they even throw stones to immigrant civilians. Nazaret, on the other hand, refuses - Just because there are children in the crowd - As if he were the only person who lost his own children, the only person sensitive to children. Everyone else is a huge fan of stone-throwing, regardless of whether they're women or children. We can't get anywhere with such expressions, one character should not be reflected as "pure goodness" and the others as "pure evil".

The third plus of the movie: A moment of silence for Charlie Chaplin... Every single person watching Chaplin's silent film laughs and forgets their pains for a moment. We see what a great artist Chaplin is, that he gives hope to people, and that the father-child relationship in the movie resembles Nazaret's one.

Nazaret deepens his search. He tracks down his daughters in an orphanage in Lebanon, but when he learns that one of his daughters has been married to a Cuban, he must go to Cuba. Fatih Akin makes Cuba of 1922 seem like a place where everyone dresses like rich Americans, lives very comfortably. Cuba had been a colony since the early 1900s and was a very poor country. People were starving and miserable. The movie claims that in Cuba, everyone was happy with their life for some reason.

Fatih Akin likes to make the road longer and longer, he loves to show the audience quite a lot of venues. We learn that the girls have already traveled from Cuba to the USA.

The US part looks a bit silly. An American gives directions to Nazaret in English language, and he, an Armenian who does not know English, understands this perfectly clear. Some viewers may think that both characters speak the same language and may not see anything absurd in this scene, but it is actually absurd. Anyway, throughout the movie, there is no logical explanation for Nazaret Manukyan's ability to understand what people (other than Armenians and Turks) are saying. How does he understand the Arabic of the Arab soap makers, the English of the orphanage headmistress, who is obviously a European, and the Spanish of the Cubans? How does a blacksmith from Mardin know so much foreign language? No answer. He may have heard of country capitals, but where did he learn their language? Foreign language knowledge of a wealthy, traveller merchant is reasonable, but not of a poor blacksmith.

The "western adventure" that Fatih Akin has aimed for, is in the USA scenes. But it is so childish to neutralize an armed man with a tiny piece of wood. I guess Clint Eastwood would have laughed if he saw this.

The story that started with ironwork in Mardin in 1915, extends to railroad work in North Dakota in 1923. For some reason, a stunned Nazaret does not freeze to death in that cold snow. He gets up under the influence of those "hallucinations", which are very, very cliché. As if the revelation has come, he goes into the dark and finds the Armenian workers directly, and they tell him directly where his daughter is. He goes there and the only person he sees in town is his daughter. So cliche and simple... With an unnecessary quote like "You found me dad", as if the audience and the two characters did not know or see this meeting, we get an extremely flat finale. Take a look at the scene in the movie "Room" (2015) where the little boy reunites with his mother. Compare it with the father-daughter reunion here. The Cut's reunion is not touching at all.

Fatih Akin made a very bad choice about the female lead. He chose a mature-looking woman to play an 18-year-old girl. And he didn't make Nazaret look older with some make-up, so they look like brother&sister, not father&daughter. In a scene that already contains bad dialogues, no emotion can pass to the audience from such a mismatched duo.

Fatih Akin always relies on the images, but this is a movie. It's not landscape paintings, it's not a photo album. Unfortunately, you can't get anywhere with just cinematography.

"The Cut" is a movie that tries to make every side, Armenians, Turks and Europeans, satisfied:

1- The movie claims that Armenians suffered at the scale of genocide and the film's purpose is to make their voices be heard from everywhere.

2- The movie claims that all problems can simply be solved with an apologize from the Turks.

3- The movie claims that Europeans always protect the aggrieved ones like Armenians.

While most of the Western Armenian girls were either sold and turned into slaves or adopted by Turkish or Kurdish muslim families, Fatih Akin drags his main character from place to place, to create his own "western adventure", exploiting the scenes he shot from 3 continents and exploiting the tragedy of 1915.

Seeing Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif reunited after "Lawrence of Arabia" which is an epic-classic, my expectations from this Nazi-themed movie was high but I did not enjoy it. I felt like I watched two different films and both failed: A film about Major Grau's manhunt and a film about Operation Valkyrie. They are like two segments which are not connected to each other well. Acting performances are all below-standard, except Peter O'Toole. "Confrontation with Van Gogh" is a great scene, but that's all. Assault scene at the beginning is really a laughable one. There are Polish Resistance members on a roof. They open fire with machine guns to the Nazi soldiers who are on the top of a tank moving on the ground. They have the advantage of height. Moreover, even from a short distance they fail to kill them, many Nazis jump of the tank and survive. Resistance do not even know how to shoot the enemy? A Nazi major's "obsess for justice" and his general-chase for years is not convincible, too. There are three generals: Tanz is the most sadistic and egoist one: He believes one general is equal to thousands of soldiers, he is ready to destroy an entire city if he sees someone throwing a small stone. The other two, Kahlenberge and Gabler are thinking about taking down Hitler. The director fails to create the tense atmosphere needed, which was done by Bryan Singer in 2008. Major Grau says that he does not think Ganz could be the murderer of the Polish prostitute. So, he sees Kahlenberge and Gabler as the primary suspects. But the film does not give the impression of that. The director fails to create a thriller. Because this film shows Valkyrie was not "so secret". Everybody talks about it, even Major Grau knows everything about Valkyrie before it happened. Only Tanz does not know Valkyrie. Kahlenberg and Gabler prevents him to know. How? Sending Tanz to French museums and making him drink more. Was that really so easy in fact? In 1944, The Allies invaded Normandy and they are on the way to Paris, but a high-ranked Nazi officer sees Paris as a holiday resort. How can it be? Story is not convincible. Editing is also bad. 1967-present time scenes and 1942-1944-past time scenes are not linked well. Only Tanz character is portrayed a little bit deeply, the others are cartoonish, one-dimensional. The movie had a lot of potential, but the character development is weak, storytelling is weak, editing is weak, actings are weak. Four assault scenes (to Nazis, to Polish city, to Rommel and to Hitler) are all amateurishly-done. For a pretentious Sam Spiegel production, it is a pity to make such amateurish scenes. The affair between the corporal and the general's daughter is not well-portrayed, too. You cannot understand how they immediately fell in love. At first, the general's daughter is impressed by the corporal's bravery in Eastern front in Russia, but when he tells the truth about him, by saying that he does not like to fight and he escaped, she is still impressed with him. She loves and criticises the war. How can that be? If you want to see a tidy film about Operation Valkyrie, Bryan Singer's movie is recommended. If you want to see a tidy film about a Nazi-chase, a manhunt in the post-WW2 era, Franklin Schaffner's "The Boys From Brazil" is recommended.

"Gegen die Wand" translated as "Against The Wall" is a movie made by one of the Turkish immigrants in Germany. First of all, these must be said: The first Turkish immigrants went to Germany in 1960s and they were just "cheap workers" wanted by European firms, just like today's Asian workers (especially Syrians and Afghans). According to native Germans, Turkish workers in Germany were "poor", "below middle-class". But they were "rich" according to the native Turks who earned less money in Turkey. Turkey's economy has never become powerful since 16th century which is the beginning of Ottoman Empire's fall. As a result, many Turkish people thought that "going to Germany as a worker was a salvation". They created "mini-Istanbuls" in the cities of Germany, they lived in their "ghetto-like" world. In other words, they lived in Germany as if they were living in Turkey. But when they went back to Turkey in holidays, they felt theirselves as "strangers". The native-Turkish society in Anatolia saw them as "strangers", too. When they returned to Germany to work again, they continued to be "strangers" in the eyes of native Germans. As another "stranger", Fatih Akin fails to reflect the facts about German culture and Turkish culture. He just creates "extreme" characters with lots of cocain, drugs, sex, suicide, mental illness, etc... Here we see, sex & drugs-addicted, Sibel and Cahit are both on the edge of suicide. Cahit lost his wife, but how did he come to that suicide mood? There is no answer in the film. Because Fatih Akin does not deal with it, he just wants to get use of it with R-rated scenes. We don't know anything about his past, except "he had a German wife". There is no character development here. Let's add the point: Losing your partner does not so easily make you want to die as soon as possible. "Being upset" is different, "willing to die a.s.a.p." is different. Sibel also wants to die, just because her family wants her to marry immediately, with a Turkish guy living in Germany. Sibel sees Cahit as the best candidate, Cahit refuses, Sibel starts to threaten him: If Cahit won't accept to marry her, she will cut her arms. Is Cahit the only Turkish guy living in Germany? Sibel and her family can easily find another Turkish guy, but Sibel immediately becomes obsessed with Cahit. That's really non-sense. Cahit cannot resist, he doesn't want to see Sibel dead, so they get married. It is a "fake" marriage, Sibel wants to live "free", instead of living "as a slave" with her parents at home. Fatih Akin tries to show us that Sibel is a victim of the Turkish "conservative & primitive & patriarchal" culture. But he fails. If Sibel was really under a heavy pressure, her family would not have let her marry her with a mysterious guy who she met only a short time ago. Also, a real patriarchal family does not allow their daughters with whom she wants. Father decides, daughter marries. Daughters do not even have a free-will as Sibel has in this movie. Sibel's brother, played by Fatih Akin's real brother, is another character of "unreality". He thinks that Cahit is a factory manager. When he finds out that Cahit is a punk, all his reaction is to ask "Do you love her?". When Cahit says "Yes", that "conservative & primitive & patriarchal" big brother is like "OK, no problem". If something like that happens in a real Turkish patriarchal family, Cahit could get shot. That's the worst and the highest possibility, "Hey man, if you love her, then no problem about your lies" is the lowest possibility. You cannot understand how Cahit and Sibel fall in love. Under that "fake" marriage, Sibel sleeps with other men, with whom she wants. From the beginning Cahit knows that this will be a "fake" marriage and he does not love Sibel already. But all of a sudden, Cahit gets jealous, kills one of those men and goes to jail. Then, Fatih Akin focuses on Sibel character, who wants us to believe that she is a "victim" of a "primitive culture". Sibel goes to Istanbul, finds a job by the help of her cousin, earns money, stands up on her feet. Then what? Sibel, "our victim", declares war to her cousin who helped her. A woman's "declaration of independence" shouldn't be told like that. Sibel has the right to be free but "being free" doesn't mean "I can attack everyone, even my lovely cousin who helped me". Sibel quits job, enters Istanbul's nightlife to find "freedom". It is a pity that some "visionary" directors always tell us that "Freedom is doing everything without any thinking, lots of drugs, alcohol and sex addiction, multi-partnership, etc". In that part, Fatih Akin uses another "opportunity" to make us believe that "Sibel is a victim of patriarchal culture". She gets raped in a bar, she gets attacked on a desolate street. A taxi driver finds her heavily-wounded on the street and they get married. Here, Fatih Akin tells that marriage in "primitive" cultures is actually "rescuing women". Every Turkish people shown in the movie, get married without the sense of love, just "to rescue some women". Another non-sense point is that: We see that Sibel makes peace with her cousin after her second marriage in Istanbul. She becomes a "house-wife", she quits nightlife, she has a daughter beloved, etc. Why did Sibel need to marry that taxi driver? If that was just for money, we saw before that Sibel can earn money like everyone, she does not need a husband just for that. Why didn't her cousin help her again to find another job? No answers in the movie. After several years, Cahit is released from jail and he still loves Sibel. In prison, people can change, people can develop new ideas, can begin to love new things and new people, but now Cahit is obsessed with Sibel just as she was obsessed with him at the beginning. He comes to Istanbul, finds Sibel, they make sex again and they promise to go to Mersin together. Sibel cheats her husband. But the same Sibel changes her mind rapidly, just because of her daughter. That was a salute to Atif Yilmaz's acclaimed movie "The Girl with the Red Scarf" (1977) in which the main woman character (Asya) is forced into making a choice, Asya chooses the man who takes care of her child, not the man who she loves. The message of that choice is "Love is labor". That was great in Atif Yilmaz's story-line, but here it looks like a meaningless copy. Characters are completely different. Sibel is a lost, anti-hero character, Asya is not. The definition of labor, love and freedom in these two movies are completely different too. In the end, Cahit returns to his homeland, Mersin, alone. Sibel stays in Istanbul with her family. So, what's the message as a whole? "You Turks, you are all trouble. Return to your homeland, Germany could be great without you". I believe that sub-message explains the awards Mr. Akin won. Fatih Akin always says that he admired Yilmaz Guney - one of the filmmakers who criticised Turkish patriarchal culture in his films. Please have a look at "The Herd" (1978, directed by Zeki Okten, written by Yilmaz Guney) if you want to see a real and great criticisation of Turkish-Kurdish patriarchal culture. The main difference between Akin and Guney is, Guney did not try to give that cliche message "Europe-West is so great, Turkey-East is so bad". That's a kind of racism Fatih Akin should give up. Usage of all-kind-music is great but the film has a weak, unrealistic story.