At - My Horse - Turkey 1981 (Excerpt)

Year Published: 1981

Description: 16mm Film - At - My Horse - Turkey 1981 (Excerpt) Direction: Ali Özgentürk Script: Isil Özgentürk Camera: Kenan Ormanlar Music: Okay Temiz Cast: Genco Erkal, Harun Yeşilyurt, Güler Ökten, Ayberk Çölok, Yaman Okay, Selçuk Uluergüven, Erol Demiröz, Macit Koper, İlhami Bekir, Bektas Altinok, Sidika Duruer, Lütfü Engin, Erdal Gulven, Suna Selen, Uygar Tamer, and others. Ali Ozgenturk's second feature was one of the most acclaimed Turkish films of the 1980s, winning numerous awards at international film festivals and even getting decent distribution in the U.S. Inspired by Italian neorealism and by the films of Yilmaz Guney (for whom Ozgenturk had worked as an assistant), this is the devastating story of a poor villager who travels with his young son to the big city in an effort to get the boy an education. He takes a job selling groceries out of a cart on the street. Needless to say, things don't work out as planned. Despite its gritty and bleak narrative, Ozgenturk brings his usual poetic lyricism to the tale, resulting in moments bordering on magical realism. The result is more a fable than a grim cautionary tale - both beautiful and very, very sad. At the beginning of Ali Ozgenturk's 'The Horse' a group of Anatolian peasants are performing a folk comedy. 'Allah created man from earth and water, and fire gave life to man,' the actors proclaim. 'Man mounted the horse and plowed the land. The horse and the earth henceforth belong to man.' That last sentence, of course, applies only to Turkey's rich landowners and cruelly mocks the very people uttering it. Yet one of their number (Genco Erkal) is determined that not only will his beloved young son (Harun Yesilyurt) have a horse of his own but also an education. With money borrowed from their landlord, father and son head for Istanbul to try to earn enough to fulfill their dream. 'The Horse' has been compared to 'The Bicycle Thief,' and there's every reason to hope that it will become regarded as great a film as the De Sica Neo-Realist classic. It's one of those instances in which passionate social consciousness inspires and informs a work of art instead of resulting in a heavy-handed message. Ozgenturk and his writer, Isil Ozgenturk, care so much about what happens to this father and son and are so sensitive to injustice that it would seem that the sheer intensity of their feelings allow them to proceed intuitively without a false step. Yet the Ozgenturks have also managed to maintain the detachment necessary for tragedy. By the time father and son reach the end of their grueling odyssey, 'The Horse' has embraced a rich symbolism and developed stunning hallucinatory sequences in a manner that seems effortless and natural. For all the hardships its heroes suffer, 'The Horse' attains that quality of exaltation to be found in Shakespeare and the Greek classics. In Istanbul, ancient city of seedy grandeur, Erkal joins his uncle in the ranks of produce peddlers, pushing a cart over the city's hilly, cobblestoned streets. The work is not only back-breaking but also illegal; at any moment the peddlers are in danger of having their carts confiscated. (These men can't sell at the open-air market because they can't afford the payoffs necessary to obtain space there.) At the same time Erkal commences the increasingly dispiriting task of grappling with the government bureaucracy in pursuit of aid for his son's education. At one point Erkal learns he has to be dead for his son to be eligible for a scholarship...

Online Copy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0290DE0-fXc

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