Reviews

The Geist of Turkey

Anson Ching
Tags

I’m told that there are many ways to get familiar with Turkish culture, other than through its sweet delights, kebabs, and coffee. You might binge on Ottoman costume dramas or telenovelas, leaf through translations from its prolific literary and poetry scene, or even attune yourself to vowel harmonization in Turkish rap. You could also go to Turkey—browse the carpet stalls of Istanbul, and take in the Bosporus by playing passenger on the world’s largest commuter ferry fleet. What I recommend, though, above all else, is to go on Netflix, put on Ethos, and get invested in contemporary Turkish society by following a set of characters, each with their own contradictory and sincere narrative strand, each one characterizing a different aspect of the country. This eight-part series is not made for outsiders, but it creates the kind of world that outsiders can stumble into, and choose to stay. Writer and director Berkun Oya has a landscape geographer’s imagination and a taste for still life. He trades in scenes of compelling landscapes and beautifully lit accidental-Renaissance close-ups. Once the backdrop and characters have captured your senses, the nuanced stories come across easily.

No items found.

SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU

Reviews
Helen Godolphin

Pinball wizardry

Review of "Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game" written and directed by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg.

Essays
Anik See

The Crush and the Rush and the Roar

And a sort of current ran through you when you saw it, a visceral, uncontrollable response. A physical resistance to the silence

Reviews
Peggy Thompson

Beautiful and subversive books

Review of "Jo Cook and Perro Verlag Books by Artists: The Unreadable Sacred," organized by the Simon Fraser University Art Gallery.