Brandon Judell
Ghobadi Soars Again With Turtles Can Fly
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| Director, Bahman Ghobadi on the set of "Turtles Can Fly." An IFC Films release. |
By Brandon Judell
Just five years ago, Bahman Ghobadi, an Iranian Kurd, shook up world cinema with his emotionally startling "A Time for Drunken Horses." Roger Ebert wrote at the time that this film about five fatherless children trying to survive on the Iran/Iraq border, "supplies faces to go with news stories about the Kurdish peoples of Iran, Iraq and Turkey, people whose lands to this day are protected against Saddam Hussein's force by a no-fly zone enforced by the United States. Why Hussein or anyone else would feel threatened by these isolated and desperately poor people is an enigma, but the movie is not about politics. It is about survival."
My, how a few years have changed the political landscape! Now it's the United States who feels threatened.
Ghobadi, in his equally marvelous follow-up venture, Turtles Can Fly, tells the tale of a huge group of orphans living on the Irani/Iraqi border who survive by selling unexploded landmines to merchants. The elders of this town are meanwhile trying to get their one TV to work so they can know when George Bush will attack Iraq. The problem is no one can understand the newscasts that are being broadcast in English.
Ghobadi milks a lot of humor out this situation, while never selling short his cast, which includes numerous children who have lost body parts to the war. One of the leads in fact has no arms, yet he is doing his best to care for his sister and a tot who has some unsettling relationship to the two.
The following in an exclusive phone chat NYTW had with Mr. Ghobadi, who was in Iran at the time. (A translator was present.)
NYTW: You once said in an interview: "I'm not a political person and I don't make political films." Are those your sentiments still?
BG: I still have that opinion. I'm definitely not a political filmmaker, and I have no political agenda at all. I am telling the stories of my country. I can't help it if those stories are steeped in politics. That's the reality I've been living in. That's the reality that these people have been living under. The lands are filled with mines. The markets are filled with ammunition and weapons. All you have to do is look at the children and you'd see the politics that have gone into shaping their lives. That's just the reality of life here. So I don't consider myself a political filmmaker at all.
NYTW: Because of what's happening in Iraq and Iran and the rest of the world today, and because you're making films about the people caught up in these events, are you not being slightly disingenuous to say you are not being political? Your film is definitely an antiwar film. In America, we're not allowed to see the victims of the bombs, especially the wounded children, on our TV sets, and you are supplying those images. You must be aware that Turtles Can Fly is a highly political film.
BG: A filmmaker can have a political agenda and go and make a film that has that kind of opinion. I don't think that my film has any opinion . . . has any political opinion. I feel like I'm showing the reality of the situation. And if you see politics in it, that's an aspect of the reality there. But I did not purposely go out and make a film that's antiwar or anti-America. That's not my agenda at all. I just want to tell the story. I feel the stories of that region are inundated with issues regarding war, and with that comes politics and the manipulation that happens from the outside.
NYTW: You've said, "Ultimately cinema will not stay the way it is today. At the moment cinema is primarily a business matter. It's show business." Do you really feel film be transformed? And transformed into what? What is the purpose of movies?
BG: Do you mean my films?
NYTW: Let me find the article. Here it is. You were talking about the ignorance of the people with money, the producers and the big companies. Then you said: "The content of all those movies are empty. Their sex is empty. Their action is empty. Their passion is empty. Those who believe otherwise can not stand still." Then you continue with: "At the moment cinema is primarily a business matter. It's show business." So what do you think film should be as opposed to what it is now?
BG: A filmmaker that gets established, he generally can get backing much easier than somebody who doesn't have a name. I feel that the responsibility falls on the children of the filmmaker and his producers to challenge the filmmaker to make the best possible story and not to regress or to make something that is more mainstream. To be able to stay close to his roots that put him where he is in the first place.
I feel that an independent filmmaker has to work a lot harder to keep the viewers engaged, and that should be his primary goal. He has to expect less from and think more about the viewer, and push the envelope more, and challenge the viewers, and show the viewers something that they're not necessarily going to see in a big budget film. Does that answer your question?
NYTW: Well, it answers a different question, but that is just as well.
BG: I feel that cinema is run by budgets much more so than it should be, but my point is that in order for cinema to evolve in a good way and to continue telling these stories, filmmakers must make a great effort.
My objective is to pursue a kind of cinema that challenges the filmmaker to make films with which the viewer is engaged. I feel that viewers today are far more sophisticated, and they're not going to settle for just any story. If they go into a theater and they feel like they're not getting their money's worth, they're going to walk out. I want that viewer. I want somebody who is going to watch my film critically and watch my film in a very engaged way. That's something I'm working for. I don't want a budget and all of that to change my filmmaking style . . . to have an adverse effect on what I do in the future.
NYTW: Now Turtles Can Fly appears to have been made under hazardous circumstances. The actors and you yourself could have been injured during the filming. Were there live landmines around where you were shooting? Were you worried about your own life ever? What has happened to the children since?
BG: There were two people responsible at all times for corralling the cast and crew to keep them out of areas known to have landmines. It was very, very dangerous for them. They had to be very conscious of where they were all the time in case something went off.
That was one aspect of it. The physical areas we were shooting in were dangerous, and then there were the politics behind it. That was also very tenuous for us because the Kurds are not thinking about making art or film or culture. They are thinking about politics. They are thinking about war. They are thinking about their own economy. Those are their primary states of mind. And so for me to go and say, "I want to make a film, and I want 8000 extras, and I want an American army unit to come . . . It was close to impossible. And I had to keep pushing to get everything done. This was also a very difficult aspect of the filmmaking.
NYTW: My final question is that George Bush appears next to getting ready to attack Iran. Are you afraid that the United States will do to Iran what it has done to Iraq?
BG: I'm not afraid. I find that funny actually. War is such a normal part of our daily lives unfortunately. When you say America wants to come and create another war, people laugh. They don't take it seriously because their skin has thickened to threats of war. We've suffered so many years and generations of war, and the thought that more people will die, and more people will be maimed, this is the part of everyday existence. And so are we afraid? It's not a matter of fear. If war were not happening, we'd think something is not right in the world.[Judell]
Copyright © Brandon Judell 2005
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