Turkey’s first Christmas movie comes to theaters ironically right around the bayram holiday. Neşeli Hayat (A Cheerful Life) places Santa Claus at its center and tells a heart-warming tale of new beginnings in the Hollywood tradition.
Yılmaz Erdoğan returns after an absence of four years since his immensely popular Organize İşler (Magic Carpet Ride), once again writing, directing and starring in this most accomplished work of his movie career.
Erdoğan stars as Rıza, a working-class man who has twice blown his chance to set up his own business. His first attempt at turning his talent at cooking into a career ended in failure when he opened his own restaurant, only to shut it down soon after.
His second attempt is even more of a disappointment as his family savings and dreams of moving into a villa and moving up a notch into the middle class all come crashing down in a pyramid scheme. The collapse of the scheme ends in even more terrible results since Rıza had convinced his friends to put money into this initially promising business as well.
The last shred of dignity he had leaves him as Rıza takes odd jobs such as dressing up in giant slippers and other promotional materials at football stadiums. His latest work comes in the form of a month-long job as Santa Claus in a toy shop in one of Istanbul’s new shopping malls. Rıza has no idea who Santa Claus is, but he puts on the giant belly, mustache and beard while practicing the obligatory “Ho, ho, ho!”
His wife, Ayla (Büşra Pekin), stays at home and tries her best to contribute to the family income with handicrafts she makes at home. Her concerns include more than making ends meet, however; she force-feeds aphrodisiac honey to her husband every night in the hopes of conceiving a child.
Ayla’s layabout brother Lokman (Ersin Korkut), meanwhile, is the third person in a house with no steady income. Lokman’s impending wedding and a lawsuit initiated by Rıza’s aggrieved friends up the pressure on the protagonist as he continues his job of bringing joy to the children of the upper-middle class in a suit he finds totally meaningless.
A unique take on the Christmas spirit
The Santa Claus costume Rıza has to wear day after day, along with the alien culture to which it belongs, have a strange effect on his life, however, as he faces the metaphorical ghosts of past, present and future.
Interestingly, Neşeli Hayat shares the spirit of Christmas classics such as Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life and many adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The same sense of melancholy and hope emanating from the film makes it a unique Christmas movie coming from a Muslim culture.
Erdoğan shares the screen with colleagues from his comedy club, BKM Mutfak. Relatively unknown names such as Pekin and Korkut, along with familiar names from Erdoğan’s previous films, such as Erdal Tosun and Cezmi Baskın, all shine in the film.
Many Turkish moviegoers are likely to compare the movie to Erdoğan’s previous films, Vizontele, Vizontele Tuuba and Organize İşler, expecting a similar comedy reminiscent of his work onstage and on television, a comedy of multiple eccentric characters.
Neşeli Hayat, however, is unique in Erdoğan’s filmography as he strays from his trademark brand of comedy and tells the story of a single man.
Unlike what some of the promotional material says, the movie is not a comedy. The funny bits come from Erdoğan’s sharp observations of the everyday man and his accurate take on class differences in Turkey.
The lower-class district in which the main characters live is immediately adjacent to the upper-class shopping mall with its designer shops. Unlike many recent Turkish movies, however, the classes are not depicted as differing vastly from one another.
Neşeli Hayat will leave those who have no previous knowledge of Santa Claus ready to embrace this newfound personality with famous Turkish hospitality and call him “Efendi Claus.”
