Bora Altas as the young Yusuf in Semih Kaplanoglu's Honey (Bal).AA Milne's Pooh Bear is one of the thickest, most tedious characters in fiction, but elsewhere in the movies apiarists and honey collectors are a mysterious, obsessive collection of individuals. One thinks of the taciturn father in Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, Marcello Mastroianni in Theo Angelopoulos's The Bee Keeper, Michel Piccoli in Louis Malle's Milou en mai and Peter Fonda's Oscar-nominated performance in Ulee's Gold. Honey (aka Bal) is the concluding film in Semih Kaplanoglu's The Yusuf Trilogy, about a boy growing up in rural north-eastern Turkey where his father keeps bees in hives at the top of tall trees in the nearby forest and supports his young wife and little son by collecting honey. The six-year-old Yusuf, a serious, introspective boy through whose large, expressive eyes the world is presented, has a serious stammer that sets him apart from most of those around him, though his teacher and parents are delicately considerate.
Honey (Bal)Production year: 2010Country: Rest of the worldCert (UK): PGRuntime: 107 minsDirectors: Semih KaplanogluCast: Bora Altas, Erdan Besikcioglu, Tulin OzenMore on this filmA pre-credit sequence establishes the hazardous nature of the father's vocation in tending the hives and collecting the honeycombs, and it hangs over the rest of the films like a sword of Damocles, promising tragedy. Yusuf loves and respects his taciturn father who warns him of the dangers of speaking to people about his dreams, another theme that hovers ominously over this beautiful, contemplative, carefully composed movie. Although the third film in the trilogy, Yusuf is at his youngest here, and Honey won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year. The other two pictures, Milk and Egg, are soon to be shown in this country for the first time.
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