Turtles Can Fly

In Bahman Ghobadi's TURTLES CAN FLY, the writer/director introduces us to a world that we generally know only in the abstract: the world of young Kurdish orphans in particular, and the world of refugees in general. We have much to learn in that world and, though it wasn't a pleasant journey, I'm grateful for my time there.

TURTLES CAN FLY centers on Satellite, a thirteen-year-old boy who's going to wind up a millionaire if he doesn't get himself killed first. Satellite is gifted with both technical and business sense, he's a natural and effective leader, and he's personally brave (He also happens to be full of shit half of the time, but that's part of his charm.). This boy basically runs his small Kurdish town on the Iraq/Turkey border, and he seems content in his alpha male status - that is, until a mysterious family enters the picture. This family could be from anywhere where war and brutality are long-term facts of life; there are no adults, just a teenaged boy whose arms appear to have been lost to a mine, a teenaged girl with the maturity of the profoundly traumatized, and the blind toddler who needs them to survive. The boy seems like an alpha male in his own right, the girl holds a profound attraction for Satellite, and the toddler, well, the toddler will touch them all in ways they couldn't possibly predict.

TURTLES CAN FLY is a harsh movie, but it isn't the harshness of cruelty or exploitation. It's the knowledge that life is incredibly hard for most people on the planet, and that the modern concept of childhood is the gentle province of the rich and secure. These kids have lived through things that would make the COME AND SEE's Florya put a gun in his mouth, and they adapt - as real kids do. Their realism and everyday courage makes it all the more touching when one of them cracks under the strain, because we've come to see them not as others separated by geography, ethnicity, or age, but as ourselves if our luck hadn't been so cosmically good.

To say I enjoyed this movie wouldn't be quite right. I'm glad I saw it, however, as it does what the best movies do. It took me to a time and place with which I'd been unfamiliar and made them real. It told me a story that perhaps I didn't want to hear, but that I needed to hear, and it did so with artistry and urgency. TURTLES CAN FLY is an excellent motion picture.