Times and Winds

Slice-of-life drama

• Written and directed by Reha Erdem

I think the San Francisco Film Society will open its new Kabuki screen with a pretty good film, but I’m not really sure. I screened Times and Winds under such wretched conditions that I’m not confident of its quality. It will no doubt look much, much better at the Kabuki.

A bit of explanation: I saw Times and Winds on a screener–a DVD intended for reviewers. I see a lot of movies that way, and these screeners seldom look as good as commercial DVDs. But the Times and Winds screener was actually out of focus (and no, it wasn’t my TV, DVD player, or eyes). I could only read facial expressions in close-ups, and even then I couldn’t see subtleties. I think the film was beautifully photographed, but I couldn’t really enjoy that beauty. Even the subtitles below the image were blurry. I’m giving it a B on the assumption that it’s a much better film if seen properly, but I don’t really know.

Enough of my caveat. Now on with the review:

Times and Winds looks at three children on the cusp of adolescence in a small, Turkish farm village. Their lives aren’t easy. The problem isn’t their poverty (which is real but doesn’t seem crushing), but their parents. Consider Ömer. The eldest of two brothers, he’s continually criticized and harassed, and frequently beaten, by a father who clearly and openly prefers his younger son. The situation has become so bad that Ömer tries to arrange a fatal “accident” for his father.

Yıldız works hard in school, but feels buried by household responsibilities, including the care of her infant brother. Yakup probably has it easiest of the three, but his crush on the town’s schoolteacher leads to some uncomfortable realizations.

Writer/director Reha Erdem captures the slow pace of lives build around the seasons, and around the Muslim daily prayer cycle. His best moments explore the community as a whole; a scene where a man is brought before the village elders for beating a boy tells much about human societies at their simplest. Although I can’t say the film never bored me, I suspect it would have held my interest if I’d been able to see it clearly.

But Times and Winds has problems unconnected with the unfortunate screener. The bombastic and melodramatic music score seemed more appropriate for a historical epic than a quiet examination of everyday life. And every so often, the camera would show us one of the main characters lying on the ground, partially covered with leaves and apparently dead. Since there was no explanation of their deaths and they would turn up alive later in the story, I can only assume this was heavy-handed symbolism for something–perhaps the end of childhood innocence.