Two people on the honeymoon night of their arranged wedding alone for the first time. Everything is set for cliche - an elderly, pot-bellied man and a tender, almost orchid like, teenage bride. The very grist of a potboiler, except it's not: he was not predatory nor forceful, a little wheedling perhaps, and as patriarchial as one might imagine a conservative Anatolian country dweller to be, but there is decency and an honour in him; she as might be imagined was a timid, clearly nervous, and obviously a young girl both in manner and sensibility.
One critic called this film a chamber piece and that's what it was - two instruments, one in a major key, the other in a minor, playing in a very intimate setting, almost conversing. The almost is important: some threads were intentionally side stepped or ignored, by the understandably apprehensive bride. The intimate chamber piece image fits the setting of the film too: a single room and just two players in it.
The claustrophobia could have been a third actor, never overt, but there nevertheless, brooding quietly, imperceptibly pushing the walls a little closer as the minutes ticked by to that critical moment before the first morning prayers when a new husband traditionally fired a shot to signal consummation.
The power of this film was that it was a slow curtain pull-back of the constraints and expedencies levied by custom and tradition on to the Anatolian peasantry: the ancient blood feuds that arranged marriages try to end; the pernicious notion of honour; the sanctity of tradition - it can be no other way. The other Turkey explained. The one seldom talked of.
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