The Magician

Iskender has wanted to be a magician since childhood and nobody takes him seriously; apart from his closest friend Maradona everyone calls him a street conjuror. His eyesight is failing too. He needs money for laser surgery, so he plans a tour: a minibus, an assistant and his father. They will work their way through the small towns of Anatolia. Father and son have not spoken properly in years, and the minibus forces them to. What works is not the comedy but the distance between them. Iskender's tricks do not land, the halls are empty, the money does not come, and what the film is really describing is how failure gets carried. The father's silence is its centre of gravity. Cem Yilmaz and Ali Taner Baltaci directed. Cem Yilmaz plays Iskender and Mazhar Alanson plays the father, with Ozlem Tekin and Tuna Orhan in the cast. Ugur Icbak shot it and Ozan Colakoglu wrote the music. It opened on 378 screens in Turkey on 20 October 2006, took first place on its opening weekend with close to a million and a half dollars, and finished above nine million. Who it is for: anyone curious about the dramatic side of Cem Yilmaz, and anyone who likes road movies. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a comedy that keeps you laughing throughout. The film turns markedly heavier in the second half, the pace drops, and some supporting characters amount to a single joke.