Some movie images will never leave your memory. In “Turtles Can Fly,’ the latest masterpiece from Iranian Kurd Bahman Ghobadi, it’s the sight of an armless adolescent inching along the ground, carefully but expertly digging up a land mine with his mouth.
There are many other indelible scenes in this shatteringly realistic, artfully composed study of children in war. And the drama Ghobadi has worked up complements the profound visuals every heart-wrenching step of the way.
Set in a tiny Kurdish hamlet on Iraq’s barren border with Turkey during the lead-up to the American invasion, the movie is about survival and giving up. The top survivor in the refugee camp that’s as big as the city itself is a boy called Satellite (Soran Ebrahim). His nickname comes from his aptitude with electronics; the villagers are desperate for TV reports about the impending war, and he’s the only one who knows how to hook them up.
With his thick, geeky glasses, Satellite does not look like a born wheeler-dealer. But he’s got a gift for gab and organizes the orphaned refugees’ money-making enterprises.
Mine-clearing is what passes for big business here; the kids sell them in a nearby city that’s one giant arms bazaar. Satellite is threatened when Hangao – the armless boy – arrives and sets up his own business. But Satellite is also knocked for a loop by Hangao’s lovely sister Agrin (Avaz Latif).
Agrin brings out the humanity in the infatuated little hustler. Perversely, her own toddler brother, Rega (Abdol Rahman Karim, all of 3 and absolutely devastating), inspires terrifying rage in the sister who dutifully cares for him. And Hangao, who also depends on his sister but loves the toddler passionately, has a gift for seeing the future more accurately than any of those foreign news channels.
“Turtles Can Fly’ suggests that for some people – unwanted children, stateless cultures – no amount of regime change will liberate them from their daily struggle to get by, nor from the inner demons, grown of their dire situation, who are their true tyrants.
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“Turtles Can Fly” |NOT RATED but contains scenes of violence and children in jeopardy|1 hour, 35 minutes|IRAQI WAR DRAMA|Directed by Bahman Ghobadi; in Kurdish with subtitles; starring Avaz Latif, Soran Ebrahim, Hiresh Feysal Rahman|
Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
