Turkish Movie Cemil

   Another film paper. It is about Turkish movie Cemil. I tried to analyze the movie with the help of two outside sources. Let's see..

Looking Cemil from Two Different Perspectives

          Turkish movie Cemil is a movie that tells us the story of a police commissar. From the very beginning of the film to the end Cemil is a very brave man who beats every enemy or criminal in a very cool way in which we hear Japanese kind of sounds associated with karate or self-defence practises. His only energy source seems cigarette. Whenever he gets bored or he beats someone he asks for a cigarette. This was very influential for me. I mean after I had watched the film I just wanted to smoke even though I do not smoke for years and I am not a big fan of it. The film theme is, in a broad sense, suicide of a young woman Alev. Her dead body was found on beach and nobody knows or sees her while she was committing suicide. In the beginning we do not know why she committed suicide. As I have said the film seems to deal with her suicide case, but in fact it copes with many different ideologies. In this essay I will analyze the film from two different perspectives within the context of specific details from our assigned readings.

          To begin with, analysing of the characters is an important element of the cinema. Cemil is a typical police officer and he is very attached to his job. He would give up anything for his job and his honour. As we see in the movie he never accepts bribes and also he repeats same kind of statements multiple times in which he swears that he would never accepts flattery and bribes no matter how fatal his needs are. Even though his son is a disable child and apparently he has to find money but he never does. His honour is like an oath, a kind of code for him. By saying code what I mean is, it is like a heroic way of living. As we know from Homer or Virgil, heroes live in the way they believed, they swear and they never give up. Cemil is that kind of man and he is very heroized in the movie that no one can beat him and he always wins, he is very intelligent, very right and brilliant man. As I said he is very typical policeman and he is representative of ideal policeman. “Stereotypes serve a lot here. The actors and stars bring along their conventional qualifications. Small conflicts, competitions, self-sacrifices together with obstructions, awards and punishments” ( Yalur 80). He serves a lot to stereotypes about policeman and he behaves as the way he believes. From his dialogues to his work mates or his mistress and his wife we understand that it is very common in this period to see inappropriate behaviors of civil servants. We know from the Ottoman time, bribe or corruption among government employees was the problem of all the time in our history. Cemil is the representative of proper and honest civil service. In other words he shows how it is supposed to be. It is the one of the primary elements of popular cinema as Tolga Yalur says in his essay. “It is imperative for the dominant fiction of Yeşilçam to provide the spectator with the maximum likelihood of truth to make the spectators believe in the “reality” it represents (Yalur 81). Cemil’s life is much more like that. He has family and he has small conflicts like having mistress and at the same time hoping to reunite with his wife and becoming again a family. As a father he feels deeply responsible from his son because he is a kind of sacrifices his son to be honest man. He wants to train him as the way he believes that is why he brings him books and advises him to read and not to forget anything about our glorious history. He is a kind of father who wants to copy his identity to his child. This is the one perspective of evaluating the film and the other is about nationalism.

          In the film we see national motives in many different scenes. Cemil always praises his nation and he is very proud of being Turkish. All the time he mentions about how his ancestors defeated Italians, British and so on. It is like director of the movie wants to imbue us this deeply nationalism thorough Cemil’s speeches. I have supporter for this theses “Film-makers were necessarily among those called upon to know and represent in the cause of building the ideal image of the nation” ( Aksoy, Robins 198 ). Apparently directors feel responsible to be influential about some ideologies rather than just giving messages. With speeches of Cemil’s and his advises to his friends and his children it is tried to create this kind of deeply national image. Sometimes we hear national marches from background which also serves this creation. Another thing is, the big enemy is foreign and most probably American. It can be also a reflection of foreign effect within Turkey and they are shown as enemies in order to subordinate this deeply nationalism so to speak. In Turkish we have a special idiom for it which roughly says neither pig can be hide nor infidel can be brother. Another passage of the quoted article says “The imperative, according to Refiğ, was for Turkish film-makers to find inspiration in their own ‘history and people’….to find ‘a language that is right for the country’” ( Aksoy, Robins 201 ).  That tells us directors of the Turkish cinema were a kind of obliged to make films within the context of their own national language and history. Apart from enlightening a suicide case the movie Cemil carries these concerns as such. The film is trying to create a national consciousness which will provide perpetuity of the nation. It is necessary for the protection to impose national identity or consciousness and to show others as enemies.

          To sum up, the movie Cemil can be considered from different ways, in fact total analyze would be a little book. In this film we see how directors carry about representing an ideal character which should be right and honest. On the other hand the film is affected by conditions of its term that is why it stresses a lot about national identity and corruption of civil service. In the time of movie we know Turkey lost a lot of people in wars or little uprises. We have many martyrs at that time and Alev’s father is the symbol of this lost. Of course it is inevitable for any branch of art not to be affected by the social, political and economical conditions of the time.

                                                        Works Cited

Aksoy, A. and Robins, K. “Deep Nation: The National Question and Turkish Cinema      Culture” in ed. Hjort, M. and Mackenzie, S. Cinema and Nation. London, Routledge. 2000. Print.

Yalur, T. “ Dominant Fiction and Yeşilçam Cinema” in ed. Dönmez, R. Ö & Özmen, F.A. Gendered Idetities: Criticizing Patriarchy in Turkey. Lexington Books. 2013. Print.