RipDelight
This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
elsinefilo
Abdul Hamid II has been one of the most controversial rulers of Ottomans. While he was hailed as a despotic leader because of his methods by revolutionary young Turks, his liberal reforms were regarded with suspicion by conservatives. One of the longest Ottoman rulers, Abd Al-Hamid II,who welcomed the constitutional era in Ottoman history had to oversee a major decline in Ottoman power. The disintegration of the Balkans, the war with Russia, renting Cyprus to Britain, armed clashes between the Muslim and Orthodox ethnic groups in the East were just a few of the many problems he had to deal with. In such a period he had to satisfy the political desires of two separate poles, the reformist young Turks vs. conservative Islamists. The writer of the book "The Fall of Sultan Hamid" Nahid Sırrı apparently did not use the name "Abdul Hamid" in his book because that's the exact name his rivals would use. Those who took an oath of allegiance to the Sultan never used that name so Ziya Öztan may have made an ideological decision here or maybe he just acted according to the time. While the book concerns mainly about the transformation of a young Turk because of a woman,the only daughter of one of the former viziers of Hamid the movie seems to be focused on the fight between the young Turks and reactionaries. Though the distinctive mise-en-scène captures the soul of the period, the scenes showing uber-conservative insurgents look far-fetched. For instance in one of these scenes, the demonstrators break the materials of shadow puppetry just because they think it is against Islam. What the shadow operator ( Müjdat Gezen) says "you are the same in every time" sounds meaningful but his crying scene looks so hammy. Nimet is 23 year old charming woman who has big green eyes in the book. Meltem Cumbul who plays Nimet was already 33 when she played in the movie. She seemed really old for that role but she is more of a credible character in the movie. Nahid Sırrı's female characters may sound so extreme sometimes,especially for a movie. All I am saying, it is not actually a bad movie for those who like historical stories, it has its major flaws and those who liked the book may not necessarily like the movie.
