Times and Winds in the UK.

"Times and Winds is a remarkable piece of work, conceived at the highest pitch of intelligence: it is a cinematic poem, replete with fear and rapture, and one of the best films of the year," declares the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw.

"Austerity is one of the qualities a viewer expects of any film set in a deprived Turkish mountain village where people are outnumbered by goats, life revolves around the imam's calls to prayer and a father expresses love for his son by beating him for five minutes rather than the customary ten," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. "In this respect, and this respect alone, Times and Winds disappoints.... [T]his supremely confident picture from the Istanbul-born writer-director Reha Erdem breaks many of the usual art-house rules. It is poetic but also visually aggressive, and it runs on a punchy rhythm from the get-go."

"Reha Erdem adds his name to those of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Fatih Akin in the list of directors heading up the impressive recent revival of Turkish cinema," writes Wally Hammond in Time Out. "It's true that the conflicts of Turkey's poised situation - at a crossroads between Asia and Europe, tradition and modernity, secularism and religion - are reflected in the lives of its three pubescent protagonists - Omer, Yakup and Yildiz - as we experience the hardship and strictures of rural life through their variously troubled and subtly handled rites of passage. But Erdem's film is not essentially political, despite its pointed view of patriarchy - and sexism - shown in the plans, real and imaginary, of more than one of the boys to kill their respective fathers."

"It is, at a guess, about life's relentless march, about death, rebirth, and the hollow limits of religion in the face of overwhelming nature," writes Kevin Maher in the London Times. "You have to see it to get it, but when you've got it you've got it for good."

"[I]t's Erdem's unsentimental compassion towards his characters, his fidelity to the rhythms of their lives and the arcs of their imaginations, that gives this film its wondrous power and depth," finds the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu.

Earlier: Reviews from January.

Posted by dwhudson at August 29, 2008 9:40 AM