Çogunluk

Mertkan is a twenty something, moderately overweight young man in Turkey, and has to deal with his boring life (which consists mainly of hanging out with friends at shopping malls) and his job working for his strict, domineering father, who runs a small construction company in Istanbul. He has a break with routine when he is involved with a Kurdish girl named Gul (the pretty Esme Madra, the best thing in the film) he met in a fast food restaurant. When his family learns of this relationship, they are naturally quite opposed to it.

Filmed with good production values, the main interest of this movie to me is that it shows life in an urban middle class milieu in Turkey. The main problem with it is that most of the characters are so unpleasant, especially the father and the son. The only exception is the Kurdish girl, but the movie never focus on her voice, nor we understand why she would be attracted to him.

Since Turkey is supposedly a fairly conservative country, I was surprised this movie includes a sexual scene, not particularly explicit for Western standards, but it does involve female frontal nudity.

The characters in this film annoyed me greatly. Their black and white line of thinking included religion/race, school (not needed) versus army (useful), owners versus workers, men versus women, etcetera. I may safely assume that this annoyance was intentional, hence a compliment to the film makers. In other words, a job well done.

I don't think this situation is typically Turkish, and could easily be moved to other countries (except The Netherlands);-)) of course).

The only problem that I am stuck with, is that the title (Majority) cannot be explained from the contents. Neither contained the announcement any clues. But that is only a minor issue, and not demeaning for the end result we saw on screen.

This Turkish film is the honest portrayal of a lost generation which has to depend almost entirely on the parents. A lot of nice things have been written about this film's lead character but the truth is that he is a complete misfit. Hanging out with friends at Malls seems to be his only hobby. By making use of these two personality traits, Seren Yuce shows the differences between rich and poor in modern Turkey. However, one major trouble with this film is that its lead actor utterly fails to convey notions of hardships. Although his girl friend is from a minority community. It doesn't shock viewers to discover that she wouldn't be accepted by his parents. In the past director Seren Yuce worked with established Turkish directors such as Faith Akin and Yesim Ustaoglu. Majority is the first film by this director which has won some key awards at different important film festivals for itself as well as its protagonists.

Excellent story, perfectly scripted and beautifully shot! An exciting directorial debut from young Seren Yuce whom the Turkish cinephile would mostly recall with his assistance director duties in various acclaimed movies such as "Takva" of Oner Kiziltan and "Auf der Anderen Seite (Yasamin Kiyisinda)" of Faith Akin. Settar Tanriogen excels once again, Bartu Kucukcaglayan brings his natural acting abilities from the stage to white screen and Esme Madra comes out of nowhere, at least for me, to shock us with her amazingly convincing acting. This movie won 3 Golden Oranges for Best Movie, Best Directing and Best Actor and it deserved each and every one of them if not more. Prior to Antalya, Seren Yuce also won "Lion of the Future" award in Venice. It is not going to surprise me if more and more awards keep coming in different cinema festivals throughout the world. It is one of the better movies made in Turkey in the recent years and not to be missed at any cost!

I am so sorry because of seeing that film. It was totally unrealistic and it was a terrible representation of Turkish family composition and Turkish society. It is true that Kurdish people in Turkish society can be discriminated in some ways. However, there is another side of the coin, there are many places in Turkey in which Kurds and Turks live peacefully, they are friends, they are neighbors... In addition to the message of the film about discrimination to Kurdish people, it was an unrealistic representation of Turkish family. This kind of family cannot be and shouldn't be generalized to all Turkish families, even it is not a good representation of mid-upper class families. There is a great change in Turkish family composition from past to today. So this film doesn't account the change in the society. From my perspective, this film is just a snap shot of a minority in Turkey in terms of family and style of living. There is a much bigger picture when you look from backstage to Turkish life. And the filmmaker either fails to capture that bigger picture or prefers to look at from a micro perspective on purpose. Result is a really bad representation of Turkey unfortunately. I do support that there must be films about discrimination in Turkey. However, being realistic is the most essential part of making a film with social messages. Instead of having films that perpetuate hate within a society, I really wish to see films that give peace messages at the end even though it gives a real picture of discrimination.