The Honest One

Ali Riza Bey is a cashier in a government office and honest to a degree nobody around him understands; they treat it as an oddity. One day a large sum of public money he is carrying is stolen and his life inverts. Nobody believes his account. Everyone assumes he took it himself and staged the robbery, and that belief makes him, for the first time, a man people respect. He finds himself surrounded by the same people who never took him seriously. Ertem Egilmez directed from a screenplay by Basar Sabuncu. Sener Sen plays Ali Riza, with Adile Nasit as his mother-in-law, Aysen Gruda as his wife Naciye and Erdal Ozyagcilar in support. It opened in September 1984. The idea at the centre is not a comic premise but a straight observation about Turkey in the eighties: a climate in which honesty is unbelievable and theft is reasonable. That is what separates it from Egilmez's earlier ensemble comedies; the jokes are there and the ground underneath is bitter. Sener Sen carries the film, keeping the character serious and bewildered rather than ridiculous. Who it is for: viewers who like the period when Turkish popular cinema turned to social satire, and Sener Sen. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fast comedy. It moves slowly and leaves discomfort rather than laughter by the end.