{"id":4212,"date":"2012-01-31T00:49:57","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4212"},"modified":"2012-01-31T00:49:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:49:57","slug":"film-poor-ones-the-poor-the-miserable-the-zavallilar-1975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4212","title":{"rendered":"Film: Poor Ones, The \/ Poor, The \/ Miserable, The \/ Zavallilar (1975)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>P to R<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good \/ DVD Transfer: \u00a0n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: n\/a\u00a0\/ Region: 1n\/a\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre: Drama \/ Crime<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Three soon-to-be ex-cons reflect on their sad circumstances before being released into the world as free men.<\/p>\n

Special Features: n\/a<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Although steeped in earnest melodrama, it\u2019s still hard to dismiss The Poor Ones<\/strong> as a lesser film within Yilmaz Guney\u2019s canon because it\u2019s surprisingly daring for its vivid, utterly grim depiction of the grungy stratum where Istanbul\u2019s poor survive by finding whatever niche role they can exploit for food, shelter, and a little love.<\/p>\n

Co-writer \/ director \/ co-star Yilmaz Guney was arrested and sent to jail early into production for \u2018harboring anarchists in his home,’ resulting in several compromises with his character of career thief \/ loser Abuzer \u2013 one of three criminals reflecting on the events that led them to being incarcerated. The original script likely showed each of the three as adults committing their heinous crimes before incarceration, and additional material as they struggle to find some food and shelter after they\u2019re released in the middle of winter, with no skills or prospects whatsoever.<\/p>\n

To save a reported half hour of completed footage, the compromise, as devised by Guney and co-writer \/ new co-director Atif Yilmaz, was to expand the flashbacks of Guney\u2019s character, Abuzer. The first material shows Abuzer as a child, witnessing his mother\u2019s murder of his abusive stepfather after the brute attempts to make money off her through prostitution. The event dooms the boy to a life of crime and misery, and the character is later shown as a teen, trying to impress a pretty girl at the carousel where he works, only to lose his job for almost causing a riot. The sympathetic girl arranges a job for him at the factory where he works, but with a criminal record, the door of opportunity and salvation is slammed in his face.<\/p>\n

The actor who plays teenaged Abuzer mimics the same hunched over posture and hungry look to maintain continuity with Guney\u2019s performance, and Guney\u2019s retention of a beard also camouflages the nuances of his face, helping to mute any dissimilarities between the actors.<\/p>\n

The flashback sequences of the other inmates \u2013 Arap (Guven Sengil), and Haci (Yildirim Onal) \u2013 feel more natural, but the child and teen episodes of Abuzer’s life provide some variation, since there is an inherent structural monotony when the other characters sit and begin their tales in a kind of \u2018I remember when\u2026\u2019 pose prior to Guney’s rare use of an optical dissolve (signaled by a sudden darkening and poor focus in the footage).<\/p>\n

Arap\u2019s backstory is the most compact: smitten with a pretty girl whose mother forbids any private activities until they\u2019re married, he presumes he\u2019s going to receive a tea business promised to him by a landlord for working gratis as a security guard during the building\u2019s construction. When the greedy oaf reneges, Arap smacks him in the head and takes a chunk of money for wages owed \u2013 a foolish act that undoubtedly sends the police to the door of his beloved, where he\u2019s promptly arrested.<\/p>\n

Haci\u2019s past is more grim: after saving a prostitute he loved from the abuse by a hood and his moll, he turns against his love when she takes on a John. Woven in between is the hood\u2019s revenge for striking him, with the final payback being arrested for assaulting the prostitute.<\/p>\n

Not unlike Yilmaz\u2019 Yol <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (1982), the script focuses on three male characters who\u2019ve sinned because of moments of weakness or circumstances that arose because of their poverty, and the look and feel is almost neo-realist, filming the actors in filthy sections of the city, and surrounding them with plenty of dour local colour. Pretty much every character is greedy, few show fidelity to each other, and the film\u2019s ending is punctuated by a sudden break of a friendship that was supposedly iron-clad among the ex-convicts (although whether the current finale was always in the script is unknown).<\/p>\n

Like Yol<\/strong>, there\u2019s also a particular regard for women as rubbish, and it makes Poor Ones<\/strong> a bit tough to digest. Yilmaz may have wanted to inject grave social commentary in his film, but he chose the format of the popular Italian crime thriller, mimicking the grungy cinematography, and a largely monothematic score orchestrated with synths, guitar, and percussion reminiscent of Ennio Morricone\u2019s contributions to the genre. (The association with the Italian police or crime thriller isn\u2019t accidental; in a scene near the end, the teenage Abuzer gazes at various movie posters, including The Sicilian Clan<\/strong> starring Alain Delon, and released in 1969.)<\/p>\n

In the Italian crime film, women are seductresses, sleazy, and victims; in Guney\u2019s film they\u2019re similarly victims (Arap\u2019s fianc\u00e9e never gets to wed the man she loves), whores (Haci\u2019s love interest, turning up to 20 tricks per day), and cheats (the tarty flirty-bird whom teenage Abuzer desires, but is clearly involved with a wealthy man). Men call women whores, mothers call daughters whores, women call each other whores, and it\u2019s a weird worldview that\u2019s either an attempt to show the dog-eat-dog selfishness that runs through the impoverished world of the ex-cons, or it\u2019s a reflection of an attitude which, similar to the Italian crime films, was acceptable to Guney.<\/p>\n

The Poor Ones<\/strong> foreshadows the deeper social commentary Guney would apply in Yol<\/strong>, a film far outside of a popular, heavily codified genre, but this 1975 effort is much less resonant. The documentary footage within Poor Ones<\/strong> is compelling, but also functions as padding: in the prologue, we\u2019re introduced to the grubby subdivisions of Istanbul, and a group of kids stealing wares from itinerant street peddlers that’s quite extensive. Guney\u2019s editors nevertheless created compelling montages of a city that was for western audiences seen only in period dramas, touristy travelogue romances, or in its best-known role as a backdrop for James Bond in From Russia with Love<\/strong> (1963).<\/p>\n

Although he acted in more than a 100 films, Guney would star in one more \u2013 Friend<\/strong> \/ Arkadas<\/strong> (1975) before stepping exclusively behind the camera, and writing films for others to direct because of his periods of incarceration due to legal troubles. Even though he\u2019s infrequently onscreen in Poor Ones<\/strong>, he\u2019s fascinating to watch because of his physical portrait of a wounded soul. Whether he\u2019s crouched like a dog, waiting for a warden to drop a cigarette butt; or approaching an eatery\u2019s window, fighting a combination of hunger and embarrassment, Guney is wholly compelling, and it\u2019s a tragedy this dynamic artist wasn\u2019t able to continue his career as one of Turkey\u2019s top actors.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB<\/a><\/p>\n

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Amazon Links & KQEK.com’s Media Store:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a> —– Amazon.com<\/a> —– Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0P to R<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ P to R . Film: Very Good \/ DVD Transfer: \u00a0n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a Label: n\/a\u00a0\/ Region: 1n\/a\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: n\/a Genre: Drama \/ Crime Synopsis: Three soon-to-be ex-cons reflect on their sad circumstances before being released into the world as free men. Special Features: n\/a . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1064,1063,1062],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-15W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4219,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions\/4219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}