Five minarets, a few too many messages

Once a king of arabesque, Mahsun Kırmızıgül is now continuing to flaunt his new persona as an accomplished filmmaker with his third feature. ‘New York’ta 5 Minare’ (Five Minarets in New York), written, directed and starring Kırmızıgül, tackles paranoia toward Islam with impressive cinematography and action scenes, but misses with a lack of subtlety


It’s déjà vu all over for Turkish moviegoers, critics and a substantial portion of the Turkish media. Once one of the most popular names of exploitative arabesque music, Mahsun Kırmızıgül is continuing his new quest to position himself as a revered filmmaker despite being given the cold shoulder by the Turkish cinema establishment.

Kırmızıgül’s third feature New York’ta 5 Minare (Five Minarets in New York), which was controversial both with its subject matter and the debate it generated in the media, hit the ground running with impressive opening box office numbers.

The film, written, directed and starring Kırmızıgül, hopes to hit the right target with its subject of global Islamic paranoia and abundant messages of peace, understanding and tolerance.

The film’s title is a play on a popular folk song, Five Minarets in Bitlis, Bitlis being a small city in eastern Turkey, and one of the cities featured in the film alongside New York City. Kırmızıgül takes center stage with another veteran pop singer, albeit of a different style, Mustafa Sandal. The two play two Turkish cops that are part of an anti-terrorist unit from the opposite ends of the social spectrum. Kırmızıgül’s character’s name, Fırat Baran, clearly gives away his ethnicity. Fırat is the river Euphrates, which passes through southeast Turkey while Baran is a Kurdish name. Sandal plays Acar Aydın (the last name means “enlightened” or “intellectual”) and sports a goatee, speaks very good English and raises his brow at Fırat’s unorthodox style of interrogation.

The two fly to New York to bring back the supposed leader of a Muslim terrorist organization, code name Deccal (Dajjal, or the Islamic version of the Antichrist). Experienced actor Haluk Bilginer plays Hadji Gümüş, a respected Muslim scholar and a family man. As Hadji flees prior to flying to Istanbul, Turkish cops and FBI agents, led by the Islamophobic officer Becker, follow their own ways to bring about justice.

Robert Patrick (T-1000 in the second Terminator movie) plays Agent Becker, Gina Gershon (Showgirls) plays Hadji’s devoted Christian wife, and Danny Glover takes on the role of the American Muslim leader, Marcus. The action scenes, cinematography, editing, and sound are on a par with Hollywood productions.

What the film basically lacks, however, is subtlety. The string of messages hit the audience from every direction. The scenes where Hadji preaches on the messages of peace in Islam, the way his blissful marriage with a Christian woman is brought up, the FBI agent blaming every Muslim in the world for terrorism, and Acar’s speech on the integrity of the Turkish police is stretched to the point that it becomes a lesson for high school students.


Kırmızıgül still looked down upon


Kırmızıgül and Co. have not been on very good terms with Turkish film critics as his last two films were not considered by the Cinema Writers Association, or SİYAD, in their annual awards. His debut feature from four years ago, Beyaz Melek (The White Angel), showed a flair for a good story and was unexpected given Kırmızıgül’s background as a singer. The film had its shortcomings, but pleased a wide range of moviegoers and even some critics.

Last year’s box office success, Güneşi Gördüm (I Saw the Sun), showed that Kırmızıgül had further mastered his craft. Taking a brutal look at the Kurdish problem in Turkey, the film was one of the best of the year despite too many sub-plots and the familiar lack of subtlety when it came to giving messages.

The passive-aggressive and indifferent attitude of the film critics must have annoyed Kırmızıgül as he decided to cancel the press screenings scheduled in Istanbul and Ankara on Nov. 1 in what seemed like yet another message.

The silent war between the filmmaker and the critics was made even clearer when one of the country’s biggest movie magazines, Sinema, barely lent a page to the movie and Kırmızıgül. Sinema magazine is known for promoting Turkish cinema, allocating most of its pages to interviews with Turkish filmmakers and giving detailed information on Turkish films.

It seems Kırmızıgül is still the singer looked down upon by those with a supposedly more “refined taste.” He might need to continue wearing the label for a while yet.

Published in Hürriyet Daily News on 12 Nov. 2010