HOPE
UMUT | YILMAZ GÜNEY, 1970
TURKEY | FORMAT: 35MM | 100 MINUTES
With Hope, Yılmaz Güney—already a popular screen actor—became a major director as well, blending together several of the richest currents in Turkey’s socially engaged cinema into a work that remains as powerful today as when first screened. Cabbar (played by Güney himself) supports his family by driving a broken-down horse-drawn wagon, but competition from taxis threatens to put him out of business. At wit’s end, Cabbar starts to search for a hidden treasure with the aid of a hodja, a mystic. Despite Cabbar’s frequent laments about the hand of fate that seems to rule his life, Güney is always careful to point out the very human causes behind his apparent destiny. Hope was banned in Turkey, but a copy was smuggled out to the Cannes Film Festival, where it caused a sensation; the official ban on the film would remain in effect on the film for almost twenty years.
SERIES: THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY
VENUE: WALTER READE THEATER
Umut
(Hope)
dir. Yılmaz Güney
Turkey 1970
100 minutes
English subtitles
The Way Home: The Films of Turkish Master Yılmaz Güney
Auditorium, Library and Archives Canada
Friday, February 17, 7:00 pm
When one of his horses is killed in a car collision, cab driver Cabbar must find a way to keep his large family afloat. Illiterate and in debt to many people, the police do not help him seek justice against the car’s driver, and he is plunged into despair until his friend Hasan suggests that they go and find a mythical buried treasure in the desert. Bringing along a preacher for spiritual guidance, the three men journey across the desert to retrieve the treasure—their last remaining hope.
Thursday January 26
06:30 PM
Country: Turkey
Year: 1970
Language: Turkish
Runtime: 100 minutes
Rating: 14A
Principal Cast:
Director: Yilmaz Güney
Yilmaz Güney directs and stars in this searing neorealist drama, often compared to the classic Bicycle Thieves and hailed as one of the best films in the history of Turkish cinema.
Notes
"Hope is generally accepted as one of the best ten films of the history of cinema in Turkey" proclaims authority Savas Arslan, and Gönül Dönmez-Colin concurs, calling it "a landmark in the history of Turkish cinema." Often compared to Bicycle Thieves, Güney's first international success stars the actor-director as Cabbar, an uneducated cart driver who wants a better life for his family, but rejects any call to political action by his co-workers. Instead, the hopeless dreamer drifts from one get-rich scheme to another, each more unlikely than the last. After an accident destroys his already meagre livelihood, Cabbar falls in with a mystical imam who leads him on a hunt for lost treasure. A searing social document, the ironically titled Hope reveals Güney's tonal daring (beginning in a neorealist vein, the film becomes increasingly absurdist and at times darkly comic) and formal inventiveness, opening with a lovely "city symphony," employing shots of the parched landscape as punctuation, and making effective use of silence and disjuncture of sound and image. The last image brilliantly captures the unfounded faith of a man who chooses solitary fortune-hunting over class solidarity. "Hope is] a magnificent achievement . . . [it] defines for the first time Güney's universe with startling clarity" (Derek Elley); "Generally considered [Güney's] first masterpiece" (Bilge Ebiri).
Hope (Umut)
Directed by Yilmaz Güney
Turkey 1970, 35mm, b/w, 100 min. Turkish with English subtitles
Güney stars as Cabbar, an impoverished cart driver in Adana who dreams ceaselessly and fruitlessly of a better life for his family. Rejecting the invitation of to join some of his fellow workers as they begin to plan for political action, Cabbar seeks improbable escape from his declining fortunes, first in the lottery and then in rumors of buried treasure. The downward trajectory of Güney’s hopeless dreamer is matched by the film’s shift from neo-realist drama to absurdist existential parable and its balance of bitter political despair and black humor. Güney’s first international success (despite its censorship in Turkey), Hope also reaveals Güney’s increasing willingness to experiment, making a striking use of silence and disjunction between image and sound.
