Tag: 1453

The movie has been hugely successful in its home country since its premiere, telling of the Turks’ defeat of the Byzantine capital, but critics say it glosses over the sordid details.

ISTANBUL, Turkey — The Turks have a blockbuster on their hands. It’s called “Fetih 1453,” as in the year the Turks conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople — now the sprawling city of Istanbul. This epic, with 16,000 extras, sword fights, tons of blood and turbans galore, has broken all film records in Turkey, not only in how much it cost to make ($17 million) — but also the box office take, more than double the investment and counting.

Millions have seen the film since it opened in February — the premiere of which was an afternoon matinee that began at 14:53 p.m. in theaters around the country (the film opened Friday in Los Angeles). With his success, director Faruk Aksoy joins a growing list of successful Turkish moviemakers. Later this month, New York’s Lincoln Center will present a 29-film survey of Turkish films, influenced over the years by Egyptian, Indian and, more recently, Iranian cinema.

The movie’s timing seems prescient, since Turkey has a lot of nationalistic swagger in its step these days, what with its robust economic growth and emerging role as a political arbiter and strongman in the region. It’s cool these days to be a Turk.

So it’s no surprise that crowds have left the theaters chanting about Turkish patriotism, that Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared it “well done,” and that there have been a spate of articles talking about how the film harks back to a better time when the Ottomans ruled a great swath of the world.

The film, produced and directed by Aksoy, whose directing milieu heretofore had been comedy, tells of how the Ottomans’ 21-year-old ruler, Mehmet II, took down the walls of the already beleaguered city and put an end to the flagging Byzantine Empire. It’s filled with big battle scenes, the world’s largest cannon (forged by a woman, no less) and a cameo voice-over by an actor portraying the Prophet Mohammed.

Some critics have taken issue with the film, saying it glances over the more sordid details of the siege. But sitting in the posh office of his production company overlooking the Bosporus Strait, Aksoy said it’s no sin for a filmmaker to take historical license, something that’s been the stuff of celluloid since the silent era. “It’s a movie,” said Aksoy. “It’s not school, and it’s not a documentary. I’m not a teacher, I’m a director.”

Aksoy’s stance is understandable, given some of the brusque criticism that has come his way. The Greek weekly To Proto Thema complained that the “Turkish invaders are presented as the masters of the world. Faruk Aksoy fails to show important historical events such as looting and the mass slaughter of Greeks.”

Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil received a death threat after his caustic take on the film, in which he said that perhaps there should next be conquest films about the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the takeover of northern Cyprus in 1974. “Sadly,” he wrote, “millions of Turks will go to the theaters to feel proud of their ancestors and to visually show their children ‘our greatness.’ We are great not only because ‘we had the power of the sword’ but, even more sadly, because ‘we still adore the idea.’”

Even in the pro-government newspaper, Today’s Zamen, critic Emine Yildirim talked about the film’s “extreme nationalism” and said Turkish filmmakers should not make the same mistakes as Western moviemakers by dealing in stereotypes — in this case with the Byzantines portrayed as hedonistic dolts who loll about with gauzily clad women.

All of this makes Aksoy cringe. He said that nationalism is the wrong word for defining his movie. “It’s patriotism and all our nation is patriotic,” he said. “The Turkish nation has always complained that we have a glorious and rich history, but we haven’t shared it with the new generation here and the rest of the world.”

That seems only natural, since Turkey until recent years has had a major inferiority complex, descended from a vanished empire caught between Europe and the Middle East.

Aksoy said there is another reason the film wasn’t made earlier: Though he started thinking about the epic a dozen years ago, the Turkish film industry wasn’t prepared for a $17-million budget. “We didn’t have the financial capacity,” he said. “The last Turkish epic movie [“The Conquest of Constantinople”] was made in 1954,” he said.

“Fetih 1453” was filmed in several locations, using 3-D animation and on-location filming, including scenes in the northwestern city of Edirne, Mehmet II’s staging area for the siege of Constantinople.

On the eve of the film’s debut, Aksoy said he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat. One calculated risk was that he had no big-name Turkish actors in the movie, because he sensed stars would not be believable in the Ottoman setting. So he waited in a darkened theater to see the reaction of the audience to his movie, which was shot in 21 weeks over a three-year period. Then came the cheers and the throngs of viewers rushing to the theaters in Turkey, Europe and, in limited distribution, the United States.

Now he is playing the role of Turkey’s most successful filmmaker, one who is planning three more movies in the next five years — all of them historical. “I’m proud of that,” he said of his newfound fame.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-xpm-2012-apr-28-la-ca-culture-turkey-20120429-story.html

By ANDREW FINKEL

A cinema in Ankara, Turkey, on Feb. 27. The film “Fetih 1453,” or “Conquest 1453,” has proven enormously popular with moviegoers in the country.Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA cinema in Ankara, Turkey, on Feb. 27. The film “Fetih 1453,” or “Conquest 1453,” has proven enormously popular with moviegoers in the country.

ISTANBUL — These days the answer to “they don’t make ’em like that anymore” is “Conquest 1453,” the new spear-and-molten-pitch swashbuckler movie that has Turkish viewers storming their local cinemas in record-breaking numbers. It tells the story of the Ottomans’ successful siege of Constantinople through the eyes of Sultan Mehmet II, with a neat subplot about a cross-dressing female cannon maker who made victory possible.

“Conquest 1453” (or “Fetih 1453” in Turkish) is remarkable not just for its $17 million budget — which is enormous by Turkish standards — and for the size of the biceps on those thousands of extras. It’s also remarkable for the entirely unselfconscious way it celebrates war and conquest.

The film manages to combine blood and battle with a feel-good factor. We shed not a tear for the end of Byzantium. The Greeks lose the city after too many late nights spent with dancing girls. The Turks take it as a reward for their determination and faith. The film might have been pitched to the movie moguls as “Troy” meets “Starship Troopers” meets “Shakespeare in Love.”

Some argue that “Conquest 1453” strikes a chord because contemporary Turkey yearns for its past. The scenes of the pope and assorted mischievous Europeans playing both ends against the middle certainly made an impression on one former Turkish ambassador to the European Union. He tweeted: “A must-see for showing the glory of Turkish history and the games being played over today’s Turkey.”

My own explanation for the film’s runaway success is that conquering Istanbul is a powerful metaphor. There are those who want to re-enact that triumph again and again. I remember 1996, when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the mayor of the city and he supported the Welfare Party, a more overtly Islamist party than the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) he heads today. The Welfare Party was about to take office, and that year May 29th, the day in 1453 when Constantinople’s walls were breached, was celebrated with huge pomp.

People dressed in costumes with crepe beards. Galley boats mounted on motorized trailers wended their way past Taksim Square, the center of Istanbul’s cosmopolitan entertainment district. A huge rally was held at the soccer stadium nearby. The soon-to-be Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan played the role of modern-day conqueror, arriving by helicopter to rapturous applause.

Once in power, the Welfare Party tried to be the voice of new migrants to Istanbul, so laying siege to Taksim Square made some sense. The party announced it would build a mosque there; Erbakan openly referred to the project as a “reconquest” of the city. But the Welfare Party was ousted from office within the year and banned the next. And the mosque — whose construction would have required tearing up one of Istanbul’s few parks —was never built.

Today, the city government, which is run by Erdogan’s AK Party, has introduced another scheme to redevelop Taksim Square: it wants to reconstruct 19th-century barracks. What purpose the buildings would serve, no one actually knows. And the symbolism is confusing. If this government has been successful in anything, it’s in taming the political might of the military. Decorating the skyline with a homage to the army’s former glory might seem a sly sort of conquest.

This plan, like many of the city’s new development projects, has been rushed through without public consultation. Few images of it are available. The original barracks did have a mosque, but speculation is that most of the space, including much of the existing parkland, will be devoted to yet another shopping mall. If the new complex has a cinema, we can all watch “The Conquest of Istanbul, Part 2: The Battle for Taksim Square” on a wide screen.

Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

via Success of the Film ‘Conquest 1453’ in Turkey Is Tied to Metaphor of Conquering Istanbul – NYTimes.com.

(ANSAmed) – ANKARA, FEBRUARY 20 – The colossal Turkish film ”Fetih 1453” (The Conquest 1453), about Constantinople’s capture by the Ottoman Turks, is drawing in many viewers, but has been criticised over its allegedly excessive Islamic nationalism by one of the most important Turkish artists, pianist and composer Fazil Say.

The artist, newspaper Milliyet reports, has released a written statement in which he denies his involvement in the film’s soundtrack, and confirms that he has stepped out of the project due to its megalomania, which oozes from the film in his words.

The film lacks artistic value, Say continues, and idolises nationalism, potentially creating problems for viewers from different cultures. ”Conquest 1453” describes the conquest of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) by Sultan Mehmed II. It was screened for the first time on Thursday in more than 130 theatres at exactly the same time, starting at 14:53h. The film has already made history because of its budget, 17 million USD, making it the most expensive production ever in Turkey. There are battle scenes with 15,000 extras and special effects in 3D showing the ancient Byzantium, guaranteeing the film’s success. The media has given much attention to the production and the playbill with the bearded Mehmed II leaning on his sword, while hordes of Ottoman Turks attack the walls of Constantinople, can be seen everywhere. It is only the second time a film is made about the conquest of Constantinople, after the first one in 1951. The event used to be marginalised in history, but has gained importance in the eyes of the new Turkey under Erdogan, which has abandoned the focus on the West of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, and now looks with pride at the glorious past of the empire that covered three continents. The same continents in fact that are on the maps of the so-called ”neo-Ottoman” diplomacy, a term that Turkey does not appreciate. The film’s trailer starts with a phrase attributed to Mohammed, who prophesies that Mehmed will conquer Constantinople. ”It is sad,” writes an opposition newspaper, ”but millions of Turks will see this film and feel proud of their ancestors, showing ”our greatness” to their children.” Apart from the criticism on the film’s nationalism by composer Say and by a part of the Turkish press, two protests that accompanied the film’s launch have drawn some attention, Turkish websites report. In Germany the Christian association Via Dolorosa from Koln has urged people to boycott the film, because the Turks should be ashamed of what they have done to the Christians instead of glorifying the conquest of Constantinople, the association claims. And in Greece, the weekly To proto Thema has called Fetih 1453 a ”propaganda” film that conceals ”the mass murder of Greeks and the looting of their land by the Turks.” (ANSAmed).

via Turkey: Islamic colossal film idolises the fall of Constantinople – Turkey – ANSAMed.it.