The Messenger

Çağan Irmak's film after My Father and My Son, and this time he steps out of realism and tells a fable. A travelling storyteller named Zekeriya arrives in an unnamed town and keeps telling the children the same story: a messenger called İbrahim, carrying news to distant villages, drinks from a well one day, loses himself and becomes a messenger from another realm. The film's real subject is not the tale but what the town does with it. Uncomfortable with Zekeriya, the townspeople bend his words to fit their own fears and interests and produce a new order of belief out of them. The film is about the thin line between hope and corruption. The form carries this too: scenes from the story being told and scenes from the town interleave until it becomes unclear which is following which. Çetin Tekindor plays the messenger, with Hümeyra and Şerif Sezer in support. Irmak wrote and directed. Ulak is Irmak's most divisive film. Its admirers point to the poetic language, the fable atmosphere and the structure woven from symbols; its detractors say the characters stay shallow and the whole thing is too theatrical. Who it is for: viewers curious about allegory and about the fable form, rarely attempted in Turkish cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the register of My Father and My Son. This is colder, more symbolic and darker, and its violence is explicit.