Times and Winds

I loved this film, and after immersing myself in Turkey while reading Snow, I found it fascinating on many levels, but it's the sense of ferment, of tension between a deeply traditional society and the forces of modernisation, which co-exist and sometimes collide with each other.
It's a hard film to describe - it's basically a portrait of the lives of a group of teenagers in an isolated, rural part of Turkey.In spite of the way of life that governs them, something that's been embedded for centuries, there's television, telephones and education. The female schoolteacher doesn't wear a headscarf, unlike the mothers of the children she teaches. She's a force for modernity, as is the television which is always present in the children's often harsh and sppartan home surroundings. One of the boys she teaches has a crush on her, and it's clear she must seem like a goddess to her pupils, whose mothers and sisters labour under the yoke of tradition.
There are scenes of great beauty in this film, helped by Arvo Part's music. I know it isn't to everyone's taste, and it was pretty pervasive, and loud, but it gave the film a seriousness and grandeur which it deserved. A small masterpiece.