Yahşi Batı

A western parody that begins with Ottoman envoys travelling to America. Aziz and Lemi are charged by the sultan with delivering a diamond to the American president. It is stolen on the way. The two start looking for it in the Wild West, where they know nobody. The idea is to place two cultures side by side: the template of the Ottoman official and the template of the cowboy stand in the same scene, and the comedy comes from the mismatch. Aziz speaks politely and formally; Lemi adapts to any situation. The genre references are open; the duel, the saloon brawl, the train robbery and the stranger arriving in town are used one by one. Cem Yılmaz wrote the screenplay and plays Aziz. Ozan Güven plays Lemi and Demet Evgar plays Susan. Ömer Faruk Sorak directed. By the measure of Turkish cinema it was a large production; the location work and sets were built to produce the look the genre requires. It opened at the beginning of 2010 and reached over two million three hundred thousand admissions, selling close to nine hundred thousand tickets in its opening week. One of the most-watched productions of its moment for anyone who likes Turkish comedy and genre parody. For a viewer expecting a real western, the film uses the genre only as a template, and the humour rests on language, which loses in translation.