03 February 2009

Review

ROTTERDAM: Inter-confessional dialogue is very much on people's minds in this new century, perhaps because ignorant religiosity has become a preferred delivery system for political conflict. Indeed, "Muslim-Christian relations" is such a common theme in the days since the September 11, 2001, attacks that taking it up aesthetically risks cliche.

Happily, "Wrong Rosary," the first feature by 36-year-old Mahmut Fazil Coskun, approaches this perilous subject with nuance, wit and a singular lack of hysteria. The film won one of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam's Tiger Awards over the weekend, marking the first time a Turkish filmmaker has won the IFFR's top prize.

Coskun's win was a pleasant surprise for those who regard Turkey to be as much a part of the Middle East as it is Europe, it being the first time a film from this region has taken the prize since the 38-year-old festival established the Tigers in 1995. Indeed, the IFFR's jury doubled this pleasure by awarding the second of this year's three Tigers to "Be Calm and Count to Seven," the first feature of Iran's Ramtin Lavafi.

An optimist might term "Wrong Rosary" a "love story," albeit a minimalist one since the relationship at the center of the story barely attains conversation and never reaches the level of physical contact, let alone a kiss. Though the two protagonists in the tale are of different religions (a Sunni Muslim and a Catholic Christian), it's clear that religion isn't the principal thing separating them.

The story rotates around Musa (Nadir Saribacak), a shy young man from Ankara who takes a job as muezzin (the fellow who performs the mosque's call to prayer) in Galata, the Asian side of Istanbul. It's a dead-end job for Musa, who belongs to Turkey's religious proletariat. His father is an alim (religious scholar) but not a salaried one and economic constraints prevented Musa from memorizing the Koran completely - a prerequisite to entering the scholarly class.

Much of the early part of the film follows Musa as he arrives in Istanbul, sets himself up in the rundown flat the mosque provides and settles into a largely solitary routine - awaking at 4 a.m. to make the morning call, wandering around the Bosporus shore in the mornings, and struggling with his flat's dodgy wiring.

His apartment's electrical eccentricities force Musa to meet his neighbor, who is even more painfully shy than himself. When he asks to borrow a screwdriver, the door slams shut, leading him to assume the neighbor's answer to be an abrupt "no." Then the door again opens a crack and the screwdriver is thrust through.

The kitchen bay windows of the two flats afford a peripheral view of one another, however, and Musa catches a glimpse of his anonymous benefactor - a beautiful young woman (Gorkem Yeltan) - as she furtively sucks on a cigarette. Pinioned between his own loneliness and her evasive beauty, Musa's curiosity about the woman becomes attraction, but the film is half over before he (along with the audience) learns her name is Clara.

Clara divides her day between working at a nearby church and tending to the dying woman who lives next door to Musa. It's eventually revealed that the elderly woman is the nun who was midwife to Clara's birth - her mother having died in childbirth after staggering into the convent late one night.

Musa's screwdriver quest is the first in a series of awkward encounters between the two neighbors. One morning, he runs into her outside their respective doors and the perpetually flustered Clara drops her rosary beads. He sets off after her but can't catch her before she enters the church grounds, which only open for Mass. He decides to return her beads during the service, but not before the comic incident that supplies the film's title.

Running back to his place of work for prayers, Musa takes his place next to the old man who is the mosque's best customer. When the imam starts the prayer, the muezzin reaches absent-mindedly into his jacket pocket for his rosary. It's only when the older patron points out the crucifix in the midst of the string of beads that Musa realizes he's praying with the wrong rosary.

He rushes back to the church for the Catholic service, then, sitting next to another old man and his small stack of books. Glancing down, Musa reads the title on the book cover, which intrigues the old man as it's written in the Arabic script of Ottoman Turkish. His neighbor introduces himself as Yakup (Ersan Uysal), a seller of used books. As he's in need of someone who knows Ottoman, Yakup offers Musa a job as his assistant and the old fellow quickly becomes one of his few friends in town.

It turns out the two men have more in common than an interest in antique books.

Although his efforts to get to know Clara are stymied by her evasiveness, Musa constantly contrives ways to cross paths with his neighbor and these scenes afford much of the story's gentle comedy.

Musa spends much of his off hours staking-out Clara's church and follows her home so he can share the lift with her, though no conversation ensues. He waits to see a light from her kitchen window before washing his dishes, and when she doesn't appear he washes them again to give her a chance to show herself.

Yakup too has an interest in Clara. He can be found watching her from his car and has taken several intelligence-style photos of her walking down the street. Though Yakup is aware of Musa's interests in Clara, he keeps his own interests secret until Musa, on another good Samaritan mission, happens upon Yakup's collection of photos.

There is a great deal to recommend in this understated little film, not least the grace with which it evokes a nostalgia for the unspoken something that is as much an object of desire for the film as Clara is for Musa and Yakup. Given the inter-religious longings and references to Ottoman Istanbul, it's not so difficult to find in this film a yearning for an earlier, more cosmopolitan era, when the city was less monochrome than today.

Refik Cakar's cinematography captures the rundown heritage of this Istanbul quarter but resists the temptation to step back so far as to fall into the trap of rendering the Ottoman capital in the touristic terms Turkey's Culture Ministry might like.

The story, written by Tarik Tufan and Gorkem Cahar, is equally disciplined. Reading the plot summary - "Muslim boy falls in love with Christian girl" - is enough to send shivers of melodramatic dread into the pit of your stomach.

Yet the reserve of the central trio of characters - and the three actors' skill in depicting this - along the sparse, carefully selected dialogue, keeps the story suspended above soap-opera sentimentality.

The story is laced with novelistic symmetries. When he discovers that Musa is fond of Clara, for instance, Yakup asks him: "Have you thought about telling Clara how you feel?"

"I'm scared to tell her," Musa replies, then says: "I'm waiting for the right opportunity."

Later in the film, when Musa discovers that Clara is Yakup's daughter, they have the same conversation, only this time with Musa asking the questions of Yakup. Viewers may find these clockwork touches irritating, but given the antiquarian patina that surrounds the film, they aren't inappropriate to the proceedings.

The story is also seeded with a dry sense of humor. At one point Musa's employer asks him whether he has any marriage candidates. He replies that he doesn't. The alim expresses some skepticism that there could be no one at all, and Musa relents, admitting that he is interested in a young woman.

"Is she a believer?" the sheikh asks.

The young man blinks, then replies: "Yes."

"If she's religious," the sheikh declares, "then no harm will come of it."

At the height of their intimacy, the trio take a trip together to the resort town of Kiris. Strolling through the souq, the putative couple are stopped by the Polaroid cameraman you always find at scenic tourist spots. He offers to take their photo and, after some hesitation, they agree. Musa is so painfully shy, however, that the cameraman can't coax him to actually stand fully in the same frame as Clara.

The Polaroid captures the yearning, distance and misunderstanding, at once sad and comic, that resides at the heart of this film, and so much else.

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.