TIFF | The Friend

Sunday February 5
06:30 PM
Details
Country: Turkey
Year: 1974
Language: Turkish
Runtime: 100 minutes
Rating: 14A
Principal Cast:
Director: Yilmaz Güney


A prosperous architect has a crisis of conscience after reuniting with his crusading childhood friend in one of Yilmaz Güney’s finest late works, which evokes the European art cinema of Antonioni and Pasolini in its elliptical narrative and bold stylistic flourishes.


Notes


Considered one of Güney's finest late works, The Friend was made immediately after the director's release from prison in a general amnesty. In his final appearance as an actor, Güney plays Azem, a humble agronomist who is reunited with his childhood pal Cemil, a once idealistic man who has become a prosperous architect and settled into a bourgeois marriage. Visiting Cemil at his summer villa, Azem soon becomes disenchanted with his posh acquaintance, and tries to revive his principles by taking him to the impoverished Anatolian village in which they grew up, where existence has become no easier. Confronted with the dire lives of those he has scorned and left behind, Cemil comes to a drastic decision. Looking back to Antonioni and Pasolini in its evocation of European art cinema (the Variety critic compared it to Pasolini's Teorema) and forward to Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, the uncharacteristically elliptical The Friend opened new territory for Güney as both director and actor, and though Güney wanted to dismantle his image as the "adventurous, fighting and swaggering tough guy," the film still proved a major hit in Turkey (though one religious critic condemned the bordello scenes as pornographic)

Film Notes from Harvard Film Archive | The Friend

The Friend (Arkadas)
Directed by Yilmaz Güney. With Kerim Afsar, Yilmaz Güney, Melike Demirag
Turkey 1974, 35mm, color, 100 min. Turkish with English subtitles

The Friend is the one of Güney’s films that most resembles a European art film. For one thing, Güney focuses on alienation among the Turkish middle classes, although he does it by contrasting their empty lives with the struggles of the peasantry. At a seaside resort, a wealthy aristocrat originally from an impoverished small town finds himself reunited with a childhood friend, played by Güney. The director, who constructs an Antonionian malaise out of the glassy surfaces of the resort’s commercial district and the arid domestic interiors of the family’s summer home. The film is often compared to Teorema, with The Friend detailing the disturbance inside the family created by the friend’s visit. The film also marks the last time Güney would appear onscreen as an actor.