Film about Yilmaz Güney: Tyrant and freedom fighter

Yilmaz Güney - I, the reviewer, had honestly never heard of him. The Turkish immigrants on the street of a small French town, on the other hand, get bright eyes when they are addressed to Güney: "For us he was an idol, a hero, we wanted to be like him," says one elderly man beaming, and another, the Preparing kebab standing behind a bar, says: "The first thing that comes to my mind about Güney is that he was a brave man." This scene from the documentary "The Legend of the Ugly King" makes it clear that the memory of the Turkish-Kurdish actor and filmmaker Yilmaz Güney has not faded until today.

In his homeland, Güney, who has worked on more than 100 films as an actor, screenwriter and director, was a star, loved and revered. He became known in the West when he won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 1982 for "Yol," a film shot out of jail at his orders. Because Güney, born in 1937 in Adana, Turkey, died in 1984 in exile in France, spent a lot of time in Turkish prisons.

He was a figurehead of the Kurdish and socialist struggle for freedom and believed in the revolution; he took the golden palm with his fist raised, and with his fist raised, thousands followed his casket when he was buried in Paris.

photo gallery

10 pictures

"The Legend of the Ugly King" is a cinematic approach to this equally popular and political filmmaker, an approach that takes the form of a journey. It begins in Western Europe with stations in Cannes, Vienna and Paris, passes through Istanbul and Adana and finally ends in Diyarbakir, the center of the Turkish Kurds in the extreme southeast of the country. She shot Hüseyin Tabak, a young, German-Kurdish filmmaker who says of himself that he has become a filmmaker just because of Güney, and has accordingly created his Güney portrait as a personal research.

Tobacco is often included in the interviews with contemporary witnesses, friends and companions of Güney. In between, you can see him bending over notes in the train or standing at home in front of a wall full of scrawled notes with dates, names and film titles. Despite these subjective markings, "The Legend of the Ugly King" trusts in a sort of mosaic technique that has an objectifying effect: piece by piece, a polyphonic portrait is assembled through the interviews, while the question of what exactly Güney and his films for tobacco personally meaning, getting increasingly out of sight.

No film aesthetic view

But "The Legend of the Ugly King" gives insights into a film culture and acting tradition, which is probably alien to many in the West. The spectrum ranges from the arachaic pathos of austere black-and-white images, which show life under quasi-feudal structures to the fullest, to stylish gangster films in which Güney appears as a kind of James Bond, in a white tuxedo and black bow tie, accompanied by surf guitars Sound: the man who shoves the pistol under his pillow before turning to the beautiful naked man in his bed. The electrifying charisma of Güney - who was called "ugly king" because of his virile beauty, which was different from other Turkish film stars of the time - transports itself immediately.

Precisely because the film material shown captivates so casually, it is a pity that a more precise film-aesthetic view does not take place; a film historian or a critic who does not focus on the form and imagery of Güney's films is missing. An essay by the film critic Bert Rebhandl, who has just appeared in the current issue of the film magazine "Cargo", shows that there is much to be said. The "kaleidoscopic mise-en-scène" is read there, with which Güney used to resolve individual scenes into many, barely varied settings.

"The Legend of the Ugly King"

Germany, Austria 2017
Director: Hüseyin Tabak
Screenplay: Hüseyin Tabak, Mehmet Aktas
Distribution: Mitosfilm
Length: 122 minutes
FSK: n / a
Start: 11th of October

Instead, "The Legend of the Ugly King" undertakes a biographical reading and understands Güney's life and work as inseparable and fatefully interwoven. The excerpts from films are mounted with the statements of his companions, that film and life constantly comment on each other and fiction and reality seem to merge into each other.

Scenes from Güney's film "Seyyit Han" ("Bride of the Earth") from 1968, in which a man (played by Güney himself) shoots his lover (played by Nebahat Çehre, Güney's wife), are reminiscent of, among other things Güney killed her in a violent outburst and broke her collarbone. Again and again, tobacco montages produce such mirror relationships and draw Güney's films to illustrate his life.

Anyway, Güney's tantrums. Already at the beginning of the film, he is seen shooting an interpreter while filming in France because he allegedly translated wrongly. The socialist freedom fighter against dictatorship and fascism turns out to be (not only) on set as a palpable tyrant. In his films, not only in "Seyyit Han", Güney has radically exposed paternal and patriarchal violence, as evidenced by a difficult bearable film scene in which a father beats his adult son for minutes and tramples on the ground lying on his feet.

Thus, Güney remains a contradictory figure whose conflicts tobacco film can not or will not resolve. A journal with the somewhat ancient name "Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes" By the way, 2012 has published the essay of a German Turkologist on Güney. Headline: "Who was Yilmaz Güney? Highlights on a left-wing macho icon."

In the video: The trailer for "The Legend of the Ugly King"

Video

Mitosfilm