Hope

I didn't know what to expect coming into seeing Umut, only having heard that the critical consensus is that this is the best Turkish film ever made (don't know if that's true). Taken as a whole, this is a challenging film to explain. It is divided between neo-realistic photography and settings, and a story which ends almost surrealistically. It is the story of poverty as injustice, but also poverty as the result of the inaction or foolish actions of those who are poor. It may be read, also, as a comment on capitalism at large, or a comment on masculinity, or a religious commentary, or all of the above, or something else entirely.

Artistically, it is stunning. The available-light photography captures the streets of the city and the dawns on the plain with simplicity and poignancy. However, it isn't perfect - in my opinion, it is weakened by poor acting on the part of several characters (including the primary character's wife especially), and the stock which I saw (on Tour at the Freer gallery in Washington D.C.) had several distracting gaps of several seconds each.