Plans go seriously awry for Boran, a musician who buys a wonderful new Istanbul apartment for his young Kurdish wife and son, in Bahman Ghobadi’s quixotic tale of loss and its aftermath, The Four Walls. When a building is erected in front of his window, blocking the sea view, he becomes enraged and goes into full-scale battle mode to get his stolen view back. Softening the harsher aspects of the story with a lilting score of folk music that seems to reconcile the Kurdish and Turkish characters to their fates, Ghobadi also sounds a full register of genre keys, from the blackest tragedy and furious drama to paradoxical humor, but with more ambition than conviction. One is left wondering how to react to Boran’s drama, which is made additionally confusing by some misleading red herrings in the plot that don’t go where they seem to.
But a new film by Ghobadi, the Iranian-Kurdish writer and director who left an indelible impression with his heart-rending Camera d’Or winner A Time for Drunken Horses, is bound to attract attention on the global festival scene. There are a number of standouts in the almost entirely male cast, and four of them won a collective best actor nod at the recent Tokyo International Film Festival, where the film premiered. But the moral winner is certainly protag Amir Aghaee, the fine Iranian actor who played a guilt-ridden forensic pathologist in No Date, No Signature, Iran’s 2019 Oscar hopeful. Once again, he portrays a man racked with guilt over something he didn’t mean to do. He makes Boran a strong enough hook to pull the viewer through the ups and downs of the narrative, even when Ghobadi and Hamed Habibi’s screenplay throws him recklessly from the deepest recesses of grief into situations that are borderline ludicrous.
The opening sequence is a case in point. We meet Boran riding in the back of a truck with a group of men dressed in camouflage and carrying rifles. The dreamy forest landscape, which recalls several recent Ukrainian and Hungarian war movies, suddenly gives way to an airport where a jet has just landed. The men get out and Boran reluctantly takes aim. But not at the jet, apparently, because what the militiamen are shooting at are a flock of seagulls.
After this out-of-step opener, Boran and his best buddy (Fatih Al) have a domestic meal aboard the latter’s boat, which serves as a gathering place for their band of musicians. Boran plays a fat-bellied, oud-like instrument called a baglama, which he uses to soothe souls or to rile the neighbors, according to his mood. Everyone lends a hand painting the apartment he’s bought and life looks rosy, until something happens that makes it impossible for his family to join him.
Then, in the space of a few months, a multi-storied residential building appears between his beloved apartment and the sea. It’s the last straw for the emotionally battered Boran, and pushes him over the edge. His crusade to have the building demolished drives the rest of the film, with predictable results. But it also brings him into contact with some interesting characters, including a self-righteous muezzin whose early a.m. calls to prayer Boran objects to, and who later turns up sewing ladies’ underwear, and a whimsical Turkish police chief (Bari? Yildiz) who becomes a sort of confidant to Boran, so often does he arrest him.
The only important female role goes to Funda Eryigit, the Turkish actress who played the glamorous face of modern Turkey in Yesim Ustaoglu’s Clair Obscur. But here she’s cast as a passionate mother whose existence revolves around her errant offspring, a tearful, one-note role written solely to elicit Boran’s reactions.
Music plays a big and felicitous role in many of the scenes, lightening the atmosphere and pointing to a way out of pain and sorrow, by singing about it. Many of the melodious folk tunes were composed by Ghobadi himself, perhaps inspired by having Roger Waters, the legendary member and composer of Pink Floyd, as his producer. One wonders if the band also inspired the film’s title.
Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Screenplay: Bahman Ghobadi, Hamed Hbibi
Cast: Amir Aghaee, Fatih Al, Bari? Yildiz and Onur Buldu, Funda Eryigit
Producers: Roger Waters, Bahman Ghobadi, Gökçe Isil Tuna
Cinematography: Hossein Jafarian
Art director: Babak Tahmili
Costume design: Ebru Tuncoktay
Editing: Hayedeh Safiyari
Music: Bahman Ghobadi, Vedat Yildirim
Sound: Bahram Aralan
Production companies: Mad Dogs and Seagulls (UK), Mij Film Co. (Iran), Motiva Film (Turkey)
World sales: MFM (London)
Venue: Tokyo Film Festival (competition)
In Turkish, Kurdish
114 minutes
