Bugday (2017) Reviews

• Brilliant Expos€ of Contemporary Environmental and Religious Issues

  l_rawjalaurence2017-11-27

  To some extent, GRAIN is a messy film of two halves. The first takes place in a futuristic factory where everything is manufactured, even the air. The Professor (Jean-Marc Barr) discovers that the person who can enlighten him the most (Ermin Bravo) has gone AWOL into the wilderness, and cannot be contacted. The Professor goes after him, with the help of youngster Andrei (Grigory Dobrygin), and guide Alice /Cristina Fluter). This covers roughly the first hour of the film, making trenchant points about the ways in which humanity has conspired to ruin the soil and the atmosphere, to such an extent that most of its is now synthetic. The second half of the time, set in the wilderness, has the Professor encountering his missing colleague, but discovering a more important lesson about the relationship between humanity and the soil. The colleague takes him on a tour of the wilderness, and into his private lair, where some soil unaffected by the prevailing acid rain is preserved. The colleague resolves to take it out and use it for growing new natural things. Meanwhile the Professor discovers things about himself through dreams such as witnessing a burning bush, and being taken to a small area of land where the soil yields fresh produce. The movie ends with a pretty explicit exhortation to everyone - including the professor - to avoid complacency and contribute towards restoring the relationship between humanity and the soil by digging deep and discovering new soil and new plants, especially the wheat plant, which contains within its seeds the entire relationship between the soil and humanity. There are distinct echoes of Kaplanoğlu's earlier meditations on similar subjects in the familiar trilogy (MILK, HONEY, EGG) but here the message is more insistently expressed through dialogue between the Professor and his colleague, plus a final image of the Professor discovering wheat seeds in a fertile piece of land in the wilderness. The film's style is characteristic Kaplanoğlu, a slowly burning narrative with long silent patches, where all we can hear are the birds or the rustle of the characters moving around. We are invited to focus on the land - or lack of it in the first half - and how humanity has destroyed it with buildings now in a state of disrepair. This strategy makes the ending all the more powerful, as the Professor moves out of his hidey-hole on to the land, draws a circular shape (containing the fertile area) and digs out some wheat seeds. As usual, some filmgoers might be bored with the slow style and occasional clunky lines, but there's no doubting Kaplanoğlu's sense of ideological purpose, which comes fully to the fore as the narrative develops. Definitely a film to watch again for its subtleties, although perhaps viewers have to know something about the Qu'ran to appreciate it fully.

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• Breath or Grain

  sukrancetik52017-12-13

  I am certainly very impressed and touched by every second of Grain. Tremendous attribution to all very good human examples from Prophet Moses to Porphet Muhammed (sav) also great thinkers like Yunus,and numerous others whom tried to understand and reminded us human journey's limitations & efficient use need. Andrei is obviously Andrei Tarkovsky in some point their road seperated because their search needs were different. Breath or Grain you may read this as spirit or material. Both are not different as western world scholars thought us. There is no borders between them and they grow together. Everything in the film is happening right now. We are all witnessing to Middle East, Latin America, some Asian countries divisions and how their resources stolen by some countries. They are not right but at the moment they have the power. But with this power also they are destroying themselves. Semih Kaplanoglu gave an examle during one of his interviews; "While people are starving in Sudan, there are grains grown to sell to Europe in fertile soil covered with electric tails one or two steps away." The film goes out of the way of the world's question, how we can cure the present disorder. Disorders; desire for constant and continuous growth. We can compare the problem to cancer,which wants to grow up without stopping; Until it is impossible to grow constantly with limited resources, people break down the habitat they live on, and eventually environmental disasters and hunger that have not been seen throughout history have become prominent. If you do not know much about this part of the world, its heritage and culture it will be difficult to understand but watch this film and then you can read about more to understand it. You will surely enjoy more in time by widening your harizon.

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• Grain Film: goodness to evil

  iyiturks2017-10-11

  "The film has an impressive and trailblazing potential that will attract worldwide attention and stimulate something if the perception is not overcome by different agendas and we can imagine that this energy will attract audiences to the auditoriums that far exceed expectations. Of course we say all this with the effect of a short fragment. If the language, fluency and promised story in the fragment can provide continuity, integrity, and consistency in the film, it will be able to reach the magical language of the movie theater and attract the people. http://iyiturks.blogspot.com.tr/2017/10/bugday-filmi-kotuluge-yaplms-

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• Five Stars

  aysudagdelen2017-11-23

  I love this film with all my heart. Much better than expected.. Good acting and good camera.. The only real question is how many awards will this win. See this film, it's utterly incredible. you'll see how much better it becomes. The technical side of the movie is practically flawless.It was a good movie!

• One big flaw

  bobvandevoort2018-08-19

  I'm sorry but this movie was a complete waste of time, why 2 stars and not 1 because the actors were still quite decent. This movie goes from one fallacy to the next, irrational and uncohesive for the most part. Clearly had some propaganda in it for the Islam as it had a decent amount of quoted lines from the Qur'an and some clearly Islamic habits. The only thinking it got me to do was what next stupid thing is the producer going to bring out next and what is his next flaw going to be. It's clear the writer and producer where the same person and it was just a terrible move. Let me do some guessing, I FEEL like that the producer was trying to produce a masterpiece like other great philosophers have done, such as Plato and his Plato's Cave, however he failed completely miserably. Probably due to not enough skills in being a philospher, writer and/or director. It's a shame because the plot/synopsis looked very promising.

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