The Wild Pear Tree (2018)
(film 188 minutes)

Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Language: Turkish

Rating: 4/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 25, 2019

A young graduate, Sinan, comes back home hoping to fund his book through public or private authorities of his hometown. He is also looking for job as a teacher but finding a job is not easy. Sinan is a pessimist and criticizes everybody. He finds negative response for his book just because it is not something authorities can use to strengthen their position in power. Anyways, Sinan steals an old book from his grandfather’s house and also, he sells his father’s favorite dog to fund publishing his book. Apart from this, what makes Sinan sadder is that he finds no interest for his book among people; alienated people who try to survive their difficult economic situations in different ways. His mother watches series, his friend marries a rich guy, some people find shelter in faith, and his father finds shelter in their farm after retiring from teaching. Father is showing happiness despite his difficult economic situation and criticisms he receives from his family because of his insisting passivity in facing problems. He finally abandons the well he was trying to dig to reach water and brings some kettle to the farm instead. When Sinan comes back from his military service and visits his father in the farm, he finds out that his father is the only one who read his book. Sinan restarts the well digging in the final of the movie symbolizing the same loneliness and passivity that generation after generation has fallen into him, his father and his grandfather although there is a dim hope that he might finally break through, reach water and make their farm green.
The Wild Pear Tree is a social drama happening in a city, small town and a village with eye catching camera shots. Sinan, the protagonist, is a critic of the common sense but he fails. He is going his own way of life paying the cost of becoming a stranger. However, after failing in his path of becoming a writer, he fails and restarts the well job, something they have done generation after generation. He accepts his destination of being lonely like his father and his grandfather. He finds out that his destination is the same passivity and finally, he accepts it. The Wild Pear Tree is getting a poetic tune in some plans highlighted by music and slow camera moves. This slow rhythm contrasts with the back and forth dialogues between Sinan and different people. The dialogues which are most of the time extra and distracting. These make the movie longer than necessary. In The Wild Pear Tree story does not develop. The movie shows only the situation. The only move in the story is the final where the protagonist fails and hides himself from everybody in a well and performs the most useless job, maybe just to give away his anger and survive passing his life. Sinan, the protagonist, fails and because of this, Wild Pear Tree does not give you a good feeling after watching. Sinan is locked in his situation and he cannot break free. The antagonist is the situation and it finally wins.

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High and Low (1963)
(film 143 minutes)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 13, 2019

As the title suggests the movie is perhaps about inequality, but no, it’s not! A wealthy executive of a shoe company, Gondo, opposes to adapt to a short-term profitable plan and therefore is being threatened to be kicked out of the company. But he is prepared. He has bought some shares of the company by mortgaging all he has, and he is about to buy more. Embarking to realize his plan, phone rings and he hears his son is kidnapped and he should pay a large amount of money for ransom. As he is thinking what to do, his son enters and he finds out that the kidnapper took his son’s friend, son of Gondo’s chauffeur. The kidnapper finds out his mistake but still asks for the ransom. Gondo is faced by an ethical dilemma; should he pay the ransom anyways or this matter is not his anymore? He decides to turn his head away from the matter, but his wife opposes. In another twist, his top assistant, who saw Gondo was leaning to pay the ransom, leaves him and joins his rivals in the company and ruins his plan for domination in the company. He claims when you consider ruining your life by paying the ransom why you wouldn’t do that to me. Gondo now decides to pay the ransom anyways. 
Ransom is paid and the boy is safe. Gondo is received national acclaim for his sacrifice. The second half of the movie is about finding the kidnapper. In the second half, the movie goes out of rhythm. After Gondo’s success in deciding ethically, the first challenge of the movie, Gondo’s challenge, is finished and now police with the help of media wants to do their job and respond to Gondo’s heroism. This makes High and Low a movie divided in two parts infected with disunity. Opposite to the first half that the story happens inside Gondo’s mansion on the top hill, the second half happens mostly outside in different parts of the city, and together with this change in locations, the tune changes from an ethical dilemma to a police and kidnapper hide and seek.
Finally, the kidnapper is arrested and is sentenced to death. The ransom is recovered but too late to save Gondo's property from auction. High and Low is based on inequality but this is largely left behind for the sake of developing an entertaining kidnapping police drama. Only it’s at the end that this comes back again when Gondo is faced with the kidnapper and his motives. High and Low is finally a police drama rather than a drama over ethical dilemmas or inequality. 

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The Great Beauty (2013)
(film 142 minutes)

Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino
Language: Italian

Rating: 3/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 9, 2019

A writer in his mid-sixties, Jep Gambardella, is attracted by faint beautiful scenes around him and reflects on his life and others’. He stopped writing decades ago after his masterpiece and is now working as a journalist. He is, as he puts it, the king of high societies. It has been long like this and now that he is older, he wants to change it. He starts seeing the absurdity of the people around him though he still goes on appreciating the smallest sources of inspiration. But he is not satisfied and looks for the great beauty while every flashes of beauty hides under circumstances. He and his life are full of contradictions.
The Great Beauty depicts a touristic view of Rome. It tries to give it a higher artistic tune by showing surrealist pictures like when the writer is faced with a giraffe or when the flamingos appear in his balcony. But these scenes don’t play a role in scenario because the main story line is not strong and is not followed. There are many sequences which have no relevance to the previous one.
The Great Beauty is experiencing new editing and shooting techniques. The insist on these experiences and taking good shots, music video type of photography though, affects the story of the movie and the movie goes out of rhythm many times. As an example, when Jep hears that his first love is dead while she always loved him, he is touched, and this incident is given more effect with the nice sequence in which a lost girl calls him “nobody”. But the next sequence is irrelevant to this incident and later this incidence is forgotten. This comes back when he recounts his first love to Ramona, the stripper who is not looking for beauty in life. Ramona reminds him of his first love because she was also a pessimist. We find this when she shows her breast instead of kissing him for the first time. But again, this is ignored in coming sequences. And that is why The Great Beauty lacks a story line. It’s a 2 hours video clip of a retired writer seeing the beauties offered in Rome. The ending when he decides to write again seems extra. What is he writing about? We don’t know. Maybe about his first love. But that doesn’t matter because his first love is insubstantial in the scenario anyways. The Great Beauty depicts the life of high society in art in Rome. Nothing more! 

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Tokyo Story (1953)

(film 136 minutes)

Directed by: Yasujirō Ozu

Language: Japanese

Rating: 8/10 | Yaser Tohidi

September 2, 2019

A retired couple live with their youngest daughter, Kyōko, in a small town called Onomichi when they decide to visit their son, daughter and widowed daughter-in-law in Tokyo. Their eldest son, Kōichi, is a pediatrician, and their eldest daughter, Shige, runs a hairdressing salon. Old couple expect their son and daughter live comfortably in Tokyo but what they see is just a busy life in an industrialized city and their stay just adds to their problems. Kōichi and Shige don’t appreciate the presence of their parents although it might be the last time they visit them. Kōichi and Shige are occupied with economic and occupation circumstances and they think that their parents come to visit Tokyo and enjoy the city but parents just want to visit their children. Kōichi and Shige even plan to offer their parents a hot spring spa outside the city to get rid of them. It is even cheaper than taking them around Tokyo. But the spa hotel does not fit the old couple as it’s having young guests staying late at night drinking and playing cards. The old couple are again not happy there.

The only exception is Noriko, the widow of their middle son Shōji, who was missing in action and presumed dead during the war. Noriko is working in a trading company and she is happy to take time from her busy office job to take the old couple on a sightseeing tour of metropolitan Tokyo. She is happy to even invite the old couple in her modest room despite her difficult economic situation. She is willing to spare some time with them. She even helps them with money.

In spa hotel, the old couple remark on how their children have changed and decide to end their trip and head back home, but mother feels sick, as if this trip made her sick because she was healthy and solid in the beginning. On the way back, she feels sick again and they get off half way and stay with their younger son, Keizō. Mother dies upon arrival in Onomichi. Children gather for her last moments. Kōichi and Shige even bring funeral clothes and don’t seem much touched by the loss of their mother. They don’t care about their father and leave immediately. They ask Noriko to remain longer and she accepts.

After they leave, when Kyōko expresses to Noriko her anger about her siblings’ selfishness toward their parents, Noriko responds that everyone has his own life and it is inevitable that children leave their parents one day. Later Noriko informs her father-in-law that she must return to Tokyo. Father expresses his thanks to Noriko for her kindness despite not being related by blood. Noriko confesses her loneliness. She leaves Onomichi to Toklyo with a watch as a memento from the late mother-in-law. Father remains behind with solitude he must endure in his home in Onomichi.

Tokyo Story is a manifesto against capitalist growth that concentrates population in big cities and transforms people to money seeking beings competing all the time but void of love even to their old parents. Old folks playing still with old rules and lagging to catch up are homeless and lonely in these cities. Tokyo Story show the post war Japanese society. The society that is transforming rapidly and therefore is full of contradictions. The difference between older generation’s expectations and younger generation is huge. The transformation has been too fast. There is a contrast between people’s image - they live in traditional indoors, eat Japanese food and wear traditional clothes - and their mentally that is transformed to rootless beings. It’s a new area. Should we accept it or not? Is it inevitable? The complication around these dilemmas is put in Noriko’s character.

Noriko desires to keep the past memories like her love to her missing husband and his parents. She lives in a corridor room and she works in a trading company but despite these pressures to abide to the new rules, she resists and seeks what she desires although she accepts others’ ways of life. Her decisions are fast and doubtless. However, inside, she feels lonely and broken and she is anxious about her future. Her character rises to a symbol of scratch from a lost war that made a gap between children and their parents, children who left their old culture as they left their parents. Noriko remains to keep the hopes; still there is someone who didn’t abide by new rules although not sure and indecisive about her future. She might abide soon to the new rules because she suffers from being different. But anyways the hope is still there!

Character of Noriko is making Tokyo Story philosophic. She depicts a person who have lost her bright future not because of herself but because of outside circumstances. She just couldn’t rise up again. However, she still keeps on going but just to exist. Life is disappointing for her but still worth to try. She offers hope although she herself is full of despair. The past is a nice memory for her. No, she is not living in the past but when the past comes in any form, she cannot resist but to love it. She depicts delicately the human condition trapped in time and determinism of circumstances.

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