The Sun Witnesses the Constant War

I Saw the Sun (Günesi Gördüm)

Mahsun Kırmızıgü

Turkey

2009

Turkey has always been a strange place. I mean compared to USA, Japan, UK, France, and Spain, I know much less about the country.  All I know is that Istanbul is its capital city, and that majority of Turks are Muslims and that it is located at the end of Asia almost near Europe. Seeing a movie from a foreign country for the first time is like visiting it for the first time. Difference between visiting through a film is that you will not see the country in its most arrogant edifices, recreations, and weather, instead you will meet its people and you will gain knowledge of what is inside them, be it good or bad, likeable or dislikeable, true or false. The film is one of the best movies I have ever watched. If this is the first Turkish movie I’ve seen, then I can’t wait to see a dozen more. Turks just made me realize how Hollywood gets so pathetic and way beyond overrated.

            At the opening of the film, a message from Che Guevarra is projected, something like--Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. This gave me the idea that this film is greatly universal, ubiquitous in a sense. “I Saw the Sun”, is a story of a family who are forced to live their homeland mountain because of the civil war going on. In the city, Istanbul, they struggle to live as normal as possible but each one of them realizes that the war didn’t leave them, rather it just transformed itself into something we can call a societal war. Generally the film is about brotherhood, and why brothers kill each other—a narrative template of all civil war films, and which parallels the civil war we have here in the Philippines between our Muslim brothers in Mindanao. The film answers that question—it is from beneath (of us).  We kill each other in many ways, whether we mean it or not, whether we are related by blood or not, whether we are bad or not. “I Saw the Sun” swept me off my feet by its unrelenting take about the globally and historically collective humanity that has never been vivid in anyone’s understanding.

            The film has a lot of characters and the first challenge for me is to distinguish one from another especially when foreign people seen for the first time usually have to look the same, and the names Ramo, Mamo, Kado, Berat, Ahmet and Havar are like Turkish counterparts of Peter Piper tongue twister. But what makes it brilliant is that the many characters have conferred a reservoir of experience so huge that mirrors the universality of the film’s theme. “I Saw the Sun” became a great film because it is not a worldwide social-issued film pretending to be one. The film has been so authentic and even exotic all throughout. Second level of its decency is that no matter where these many established characters go they all lead to the same adjoining conclusion that people are always in a war and that as of now its defeat still remains to be very elusive. The sentimental togetherness of a Turkish family is an ingredient that automatically makes us understand how this group of people is spiritually connected to their homeland and that it is where they are supposed to spend the rest of their days. Even until they move to an industrialized Istanbul or even to the European cities of Denmark and Norway, you will still feel the alienation.

            Brothers kill brothers, from the early scene where Davut’s two sons Berat and Ahmet where on two opposing sides—the guerrillas and the Army, we know that the film will be haunted by this premise. And the haunting has been incredibly intelligent, that will make “I Saw the Sun”, one of the most honest and bravest films of all time. Three brothers, Ramo, Mamo, Kadi, together with their father, Ramo’s wife, and six children are adjusting to their life in the city of Istanbul. The conflict between Ramo and Mamo is nought, but Mamo has a stern despise to their queer brother Kadi, who later on transforms herself into a bisexual, though Mamo is more accepting of their brother. Mamo kills Kadi in a very powerful scene . In a deserted bridge, Mamo points a gun to the female-dressed Kadi. The transvestite takes off her clothes, wig, crying and ready to die, as she pulls up a local flower she picked the day they left their native. According to the conversation Kadi had with a transvestite friend, the flower grows every winter and once it sees the suns, it simply withers up and dies. Kadi believes that the flower is in love with the sun. Mamo is so frustrated and mad to see what Kadi made himself into, Kadi daring and unafraid, he asks his brother to shoot him and a bullet at his heart causes him to fall down and Mamo to run after the brother he consciously but unintentionally killed. Kadi has the flower in his hand and before he draws his last intricate breath, sun appears in front of him. The children of Ramo, five women, together with their blind grandfather are left to take care of their youngest and only boy sibling that their father longed for solemnly. By ignorance and innocence, they placed their baby brother into the washing machine to have him washed after a diaper change. This reasons Ramo to almost die, but the astounding understanding of Ramo to the circumstance soars tremendously with what the world is lacking tremendously—forgiveness.

            The film is a collection of parallel stories all leading to the principle that we kill each other and that whether we have the intention or not, we will never be happy about it. Some people will no longer see the spark of sunshine in their life in the lost of a loved one, some people will try desperately to have a grasp of that, but with what people you know do, and other people you don’t know do, there can actually be rainbows at the end of the horizon, a scene that is actually evident in one of the final scenes. “I Saw the Sun” is an extremely purifying film. With soothing music and commendable direction, this film is a memoir of everyone. It seems so vast, so infinitely numerous, but that is the enchanting part of the film. “I Saw the Sun” is going to be timeless work of great passion and deep understanding of a very poignant life.