'VIZONTELE', made in 2001, was the most successful Turkish Film ever screen in the cinema. Why? Mainly, because it approached a lot of issues in the psyche of people in Turkey, namely: NOSTALGIA; CULTURE; TRADITIONAL DRESS; TRADITIONAL LIFE; LOSS OF TURKISH CULTURE; LOSS OF COMMUNITY; FAMILY LIFE; FEAR OF CONSCRIPTION; FEAR OF SEPARATION; GOVERNMENT CONTROL; ONE-UPMAN-SHIP; INSINCERITY; BETRAYAL; GOSSIP; DRESSING WESTERN; BEING 'FASHIONABLE; FALLING IN LOVE; LOSS OF LOVE; ARRANGED MARRIAGE; THE KURDISH WAR; CYPRUS; GREECE; REGRET; DEATH; SUPERSTITION; MELANCHOLIC; NAIVITY; KINDNESS; RELIGION; HOPE: CHANGE...All of these things make up People and Life in Turkey...
***SPOILER***[Don't read further if you do not want to spoil the film clip]
'VIZONTELE' was based upon writer, director, actor, producer Yılmaz Erdoğan's experience of growing up in the moutainous eastern extreme of Turkey's geography, Hakkâri, a predominantly Kurdish city on Iran's border.
The film is set in 1974 when electrification of East Turkey was complete and the govenment had a project to deliver a new television to the mayor of every city in Turkey to air Turkish Government Turkish Television Stations to the populous. However, the officials completing difficult drives to these remote places often were not keen to hang around. In the case of this television presented to the Mayor of Hakkâri, the government representatives only gave the mayor and villagers a quick description of this glass screened new machine that the people had never seen before..."Plug it in and set it up in a high place with the ariel plugged in"...Then they sped away into the hot distance in their dusty jeep...The locals were left with the...What?...What was it called?...The VIZONTELE? [Nobody remembered what it was called and they had never seen a maching like this one before that 'sent pictures' from an ariel]...
The suface story of the film is a bewildered Mayor and his staff's hilarious attempts and failures to demonstrate the working 'VIZONTELE' to the town, but not having any instructions or idea about how to get the machine to work.
The deeper symbolism of the television is the drastic changes that outside cultures have had on Turkish Life. Some good in terms of development and education, information and political change. But some bad, the erosion of Turkish Culture, the breakdown of family life, religion plus the imposition of a quickened pace of life that may not really suit the slower Middle Eastern nature of life in Turkey.
VIZONTELE CLIP
Our clip is the end section of the film...The bungling mayor and his companions have tried several times to publically demonstrate television to the townspeople and it has either not worked or generator burst into flames and so on, shaming the mayor. As the extract opens the mayor and co. have been up to the highest part of the town, i.e. the mountain, the television did actually work, however, it showed "Iranian VIZONTELE" not Turkish...So our would-be-TV-mechanics come down the mountain depressed...A local policeman fiddles with the television set on the back of the lorry and actually CHANGES CHANNEL, which nobody knew to do...Hey, presto, HARIKA! ...Black Sea Wedding Dances from Turkish Television...Suddenly, how to operate the VIZONTELE is understood.
The townsfolk gather at the mayor's house for an official first VIZONTELE evening...Latif, the local cinema owner is pessimistic about the television as his theatre is empty...Gathered together, the town watch the television news about War with Greece in Cyprus...A huge silence takes over the room as the mayor and his country bumpkin wife Siti realise that their worst fear has come true through dreaded CONSCRIPTION, their sun Rifat is pictured as one of three soldiers killed in Cyprus.
A dramatic scene shows the varying reactions to the deaths using a lot filming techniques like booms and sweeping shots that had rarely been seen in Turkish films before.
Siti then exposes SUPERSITION and evidence of the RELGIOUS vs SECULAR arguments of The Turkish Republic by taking the television, the last place she sees an image of her son Rifat's face, up to the mountain to bury it. Hence refering to some ceremonies and conventions of Islam and maybe some aspects of possibly SHAMANISM [ancient pre-Islamic religion of worshipping trees, wind, sun, etc.]...Siti sees the VIZONTELE as "the work of the devil" that "took her son"...The traditional vs the modern...
Rifat's fiance is then wed sadly in an arranged marriage...The television is then seen to be dominating life in the city, after only a short time...CHANGE and LOSS of CULTURE...
'VIZONTELE' was deeply successful because of its NOSTALGIA. A lost and lovely rural aspect, a slower life, a kinder gentler people.
