Get the latest gossip
‘Life’ Review: Turkey’s Oscar Submission Loses the Plot on Toxic Masculinity
Despite committed performances, Zeki Demirkubuz’s new film suffers from a three-hour runtime and deeply miscalculated narrative priorities.
At the start of Turkish auteur Zeki Demirkubuz ’s long-awaited and frustratingly miscalculated “ Life ” — the filmmaker’s first movie in seven years, now serving as Turkey’s international feature submission to the Academy Awards —a young woman named Hicran flees the claws of an impending arranged marriage and goes into hiding. One is Orhan (Cem Davran), an older and relatively liberal-minded educator Hicran agrees to marry to find some relief from her conservative dad, only to realize that he is just another simple-minded, insecure guy who gets jealous for no apparent reason. But gradually, a disturbing pattern emerges in “Life” — like a villain origin story, the film often goes out of its way to over-explain the root of male wrongdoings, coming dangerously close to saying, “Men have their reasons, too” with sympathy.
Or read this on Variety