Milk (2008)

Milk is the second part of Semih Kaplanoglu's autobiographical trilogy. The films are loosely related, and a ideosyncratic aspect of the trilogy is that the story is told backwards - the first film is about a grown man, the second about a teenager, the third about a child. The main character, Yusuf, we saw in Egg is here an aspiring poet. He lives in a small child with his mum and as he did not make it in the entrance exam for the university he has to settle for another kind of life. This is not easy. He makes a little money selling milk. He's in love with a girl who is also having an affair with another man. The film deals with the young person's ordeals in trying to get clear about the future. A political dimension of the film appears when it is evident that Yusuf is supposed to do his military service. Yusuf seems to loathe the idea of joining - this is not the life he wants. Anyway, he is not forced to go because he is an epileptic. He is a dreamer, a loner. But somehow, the film manages to dodge almost all clichés about dreamy young men - Kaplanoglu offers us a gentle, yearning perspective that perceptively captures what it is like to worry about the big choices one has to do in life. One of the central relationships here is the one between Yusuf and his mother, whom he adores - he even writes poems about her. Oedipal drama? Well, not in the way you expect it, I think. The boy is eager to be the good son, the worthy son - and seems to fear that he is failing also in this respect. The mother has met a new man, an official - this changes their relationship and we see some kind of resentment in the son. The son feels rejected, perhaps humiliated.

The visual style of Milk is stunningly beautiful, but not in an overwrought way. Kaplanoglu's film is at times so striking that it is difficult to watch. The first scene is so eerie that one is almost jumping out of one's chair - I will not say more about it here. I know nothing about rural Turkey so I cannot say anything about that, but it is the surroundings that stand out. One segment that is hard to forget is a visit that Yusuf pays at his friends job. The friend work in a mine. But also he is a poet. The two talk. It's a scene full of sadness - crushed dreams, longings, fears.