Yol ("The Way") is a 1982 film from Turkey, directed by Serif Goren and Yilmaz Guney, written by Guney.
It is set in a Turkey where the army rules with an iron fist, two years after a military coup d'etat
. Five convicts on an island prison colony are granted furlough. One goes on the lam immediately. One forgets his papers, and gets arrested on the bus at a checkpoint. That leaves three prisoners:
- Seyit Ali finds out that his wife Zine turned to prostitution in his absence. His family has kept her locked up in chains for eight months, waiting for him to come home so he can kill her.
- Mehmet goes home to in-laws that want him dead. He's in jail to begin with due to a robbery in which his brother-in-law Aziz was shot and killed. Mehmet, who was behind the wheel of the getaway car, panicked and drove off, which is why Aziz is dead.
- Omer returns to his village in Kurdistan, and finds out that it is a war zone. Kurdish rebels are fighting the repressive Turkish government, and Omer's brother may have been killed.
Yilmaz Guney wrote the screenplay while he himself was in prison, and while behind bars hired Serif Goren to do the directing. Guney managed to break out of jail in time to finish editing the movie and receive his Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Tropes:
- Auto Erotica: On a train, and it goes horribly wrong. Mehmet and Emine try to have sex in a train car, but they are watched, and nearly lynched by her family relations.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: At Zine's own request. Since she's been locked up in a shed for eight months, she begs Seyit to let her take a bath before he kills her.
- Caged Bird Metaphor: Yusuf is the prisoner who gets arrested on the bus, so he can't go home and can't bring his pet parakeet home to his wife. The last shot of the bird shows it in its cage, abandoned on the bus.
- Call-Back: Seyit resorts to whipping his horse with his belt, after the horse collapses from hypothermia in a snowy mountain pass. It doesn't work, and the horse freezes to death. When he's crossing the same mountain pass in the other direction with Zine, she collapses from hypothermia, in the exact same spot. He tries whipping her with his belt too. When she can't get up he throws her over his back, only to find out when he finally gets to civilization that she has frozen to death.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Seyit Ali and Zine grew up in the same village, and were playmates as children.
- Crapsack World: The message is that all of Turkey is effectively a prison, with people mired in poverty and trapped in their social roles and honor codes, under the thumb of an oppressive government. Armed guards search everyone at road checkpoints. Kurdistan is in a state of bloody insurrection. People who love each other (Seyit and Zine, Mehmet and Emine) can't be happy because of rigid moral codes.
- Disturbed Doves: The birds in Omer's village are driven into flight by the approach of a truck carrying the corpses of the Kurdish rebels (including Omer's brother).
- Fainting: Emine faints when Mehmet admits that he did in fact leave Aziz behind, resulting in Aziz's death.
- Honor-Related Abuse: Zine's family has kept her chained up in a shed for eight months, so that Seyit can kill her after he gets out, because she prostituted herself while he was in jail.
- Mercy Kill: After Seyit's horse collapses in the bitter cold of the mountain pass, and can't get up, he shoots it.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The last shot of the movie is Seyit's train headed away into a fog, as he returns to prison.
- Re-Cut: This film was banned by the Turkish government and wasn't available for decades. When it was finally released in Turkey in 2017, it was some 20 minutes shorter, with deleted moments including a title card that says "Kurdistan" and a long speech by Omer in which he remarks on how hard it is to be Kurdish.
- Snow Means Death: A friend warns Seyit that getting over the mountain pass is extremely difficult, and that one man's wife froze to death in the attempt. Seyit's horse collapses and dies in the mountains on the way out, and his wife dies of hypothermia on the way back.
- Street Performer: A random moment has three kids playing music for tips on a bus that Omer is riding.
- The Tooth Hurts: Seyit's troubles are exacerbated by a cracked tooth he's suffering from on the way to his home town. A local says he can fix the tooth—by burning it out with a red-hot wire. Another man grabs Seyit from behind to hold him still, the man with the wire gets it red-hot in the fire—and the movie cuts away.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: A random moment shows kids in the streets around Mehmet's neighborhood, some of whom look like they're around six years old, smoking.
- Unreliable Voiceover: As Mehmet is insisting to his friend that he did not leave Aziz behind, his flashback shows Mehmet driving off while Aziz screams for him to wait. The friend calls Mehmet out on this and Mehmet admits that he was lying.
- Voiceover Letter: Mehmet's storyline starts off with Mehmet getting a letter in which his wife, in highly agitated voiceover, asks if he really abandoned Aziz.
- Wolves Always Howl at the Moon: Wolves are heard howling at a full moon as Mehmet crosses the country by train, just to make things spookier and more ominous.
