It is a film rated as "Level 3" by Hong Kong. It is full of prolonged violence and sex, and occasional drug-taking scenes, German-style and Turkish-style foul language, and blood has become the film’s dark nightlife scenes. Bright embellishments-and most of the blood comes from the self-mutilation and suicide of the two protagonists. Just imagine, through the above techniques to express a gentle love, will there be a strong sense of contrast?
Oh, is this love tender? This love process is too cruel, but it is inherently the kind of emotion that each of us can share with our lover. If under the cover of night, this kind of feeling is only making love, then the performance of the bright-toned Turkish band interspersed throughout the film is an interpretation of the idealistic love of the general public. I watched the English subtitled version of "Going Forward", which translated all Turkish songs, so I can tell you now: a song is a transition from the past to the future, even the "Plato Love" for the male protagonist Cahit and the female protagonist Sibel "The supplementary narrative. Whether it is the content of the lyrics, or the background and colors of the bright and cheerful Bosphorus and Hagia Sophia, it can be said to symbolize a tradition-this is not the value tradition of Turkey that is opposed to the mainstream German culture. It's the love between men and women that spans the entire history of mankind. As Chris Knipp on IMDB commented, the band is “a stable element in the commotion around, and this is the relationship between the two”.
In addition, because the plot time of the film is too different from the viewing time of our audience, this transitional scene is necessary. Otherwise, the producer can only use the constant black screen to create the narrative time span.
In fact, let’s just say that the scenes of the band’s performance can be regarded as creating a kind of interaction between the film and the audience. Don’t you think that we have enough time for thinking and aftertaste in the several-minute performance scene?
You know, it's easy to use words to explain a great principle, but it's a lot more difficult with images. The film is about subcultural groups in German society. Although the protagonist and heroine are both Turkish-German, they are faced with two completely different walls. The protagonist is still doing a low-level job at the age of forty, without a career, and no family; the heroine has the conditions, capital and ability, but her family is too restrictive to her. They all hope to break through the wall, but they also don't know what their next task is after breaking the wall. Fake marriage is just an opportunity. According to commentator Chris Knipp, this breakthrough is actually ironic to both of them. The male protagonist wants to gain a sense of presence in society, or gain "meaning". His most direct meaning is to help others, that is, to prevent the girl from committing suicide again. Therefore, the male protagonist is actually constantly trying to get close to the mainstream values. After the fake marriage, he unconsciously enters the mainstream "love journey", and even hates "marital prostitutes" in private gatherings with "husbands". In the end, he is not the first. Aware of that kind of "traditional" love?
The heroine hopes to get rid of the shackles of "her society". Beyond her walls is freedom. What is different from the heroine is that she wants to abandon part of the "meaning". In this way, the male protagonist Cahit wants to break away from the subculture, and the female protagonist Sibel wants to enter the siege where Cahit left. The two sides got married and walked into each other's besieged city.
The above-mentioned dilemma cannot be simply summarized as the cultural conflict between the two countries. In my opinion, this also includes the conflict between the main culture and the subculture. The film is indeed talking about the very real situation of the residents of the Turkish community in Germany, but how can their lives be analyzed by racial differences alone? In the second half of the film, I also tried to express these complicated contradictions in Turkey, but due to the limited length of the film, it was inevitably pale. However, the symbolism of the contrast and color contrast in Istanbul's lens is as strong as Germany's. This is the expressiveness of the film enough to win the Golden Bear Award. Director Akin tried to express his views on those "cultural theories" in an unusual way-I think this speech is both clear and moving.
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