The Bliss (Mutluluk) Movie from Turkey
It’s not often that we get the opportunity to see a good Turkish film where we live in Toronto. One of our only opportunities usually comes once a year when the Toronto International Film Festival opens and Turkey enters a movie or two into the lineup. The only other chance to see a good Turkish film occurs when our local video store adds a Turkish movie to their foreign movie collection. The only good thing about this is that the Turkish movies we are able to watch are of a high caliber, the best of what the Turkish film industry has to offer.
Last weekend we had the pleasure of watching the Turkish movie called “Bliss,” a film we rented from our local video store, by director and producer Abdullah Oguz. Bliss is the film adaptation of the international best-selling novel “Mutluluk,” written in 2002, by Zülfü Livaneli.
The visually stunning landscapes of Bodrum, Istanbul, the Karaman Taskale Village and Marmaris are presented to the viewer by the cinematography of Mirsad Herovic. Livaneli, the author of the book, also wrote the film’s music score. The movie stars Turkish actress Özgü Namal as Meryem, Mustafa Avkiran as Ali Riza, the leader of the village, Murat Han plays his nephew Cemal and Talat Bulut plays the character Irfan, the rich aging professor who represents modern Turkey. In this movie, the old world clashes with the modern world, as one of its characters reminds Cemal that this is the 20th century.
Meryem is found by a shepherd lying disheveled by the side of a lake and believed to have “lost her honor.” In the culture of a rural backward village in Turkey, the leader of the village viciously declares that she must be killed to redeem the honor of her family and village. Refusing to name her rapist or tell anyone what has happened to her, she is left in a room to hang herself, she places a rope around her neck and at the last moment takes it off, deciding to live.
The leader of the village then decides that because she does not have a birth certificate his son Cemal, a returning soldier, should take her to Istanbul to kill her. Cemal takes her to Istanbul to a bridge where he tells her to jump. At the last moment he grabs her to save her and it is then necessary that they both disappear. He has, according to the village custom, betrayed the village. His best friend in Istanbul suggests a house where they can go and stay and take care of the fish. This is where the happiness begins, in a remote lovely place in Turkey, where life, with the two of them, becomes beautiful, the scenery and the sun light and the simple tasks of living contribute to this momentary bliss. Learning that Cemal has not killed her, the village leader Ali and two of his thug friends travel to Istanbul to kill them both.
Nobody in Istanbul, which represents modern Turkey, is supportive of the old custom of honor killing which influences Cemal causing him to grow as a human being and form a new knowledge and compassion. Learning that his father and the two thugs are hunting them, they leave and meet up with Irfan, a older professor with a yacht who is in the process of his own journey of discovery and leaving a loveless marriage to a wealthy woman. Irfan, in his generosity and kindness, without knowing the true story of Meryem and Cemal, hires them to work on his boat. At one point, Meryem and Cemal learn that there are no “women’s jobs” on the yacht, they learn of the joy and freedom in music and dancing and encounter a modern woman wearing only a bikini who boards the boat at one point. Meryem’s strength begins to grow as she is exposed to a different, modern way of life.
Irfan, like a father figure, buys them some modern clothes and then he buys Meryem some jewelry from a market stall. This fires up the jealousy of Cemal who has gradually fallen in love with Meryem. Cemal accuses Meryem of “whorish ways” and attempts to strangle Irfan. When Meryem responds with the expression “Cemal Abi” which means “older brother,” Irfan begins to realize that they are not really the newly married couple he thought they were and there is more than appears to the relationship of the two. This scene leads to Cemal and Meryem abandoning the yacht, but Irfan goes to find them and bring them back to the yacht.
Eventually, the thugs from the village find the boat that Meryem and Cemal are on and she is silently kidnapped from the boat. Cemal and Irfan rescue her and in her terror of escaping from the thugs, she finally screams the name of her rapist, that being the name of leader of the village Ali, Cemal’s own father.
In a dramatic scene with both his father and the father of Meryem, Cemal returns to the village to kill his father, but drops his gun,unable to carryout the task. He walks away from the village forever, leaving behind the old world and customs. However, as he walks away, he hears the gun shots and realizes that Meryem’s father has used the gun to kill Ali and achieve justice for his own daughter.
Bliss (Mutluluk) is an excellent film and the winner of 12 international film awards. If you love Turkish movies, this one should not be missed for its compelling exposure of the problem of honor killing in Turkey (and other countries for that matter). Countries that practice this awful method of murder of their wives, daughters and sisters should realize that honor does not lie between the legs of a woman, but rather in the heads and deeds of noble human beings.
