Beyond the Hill

Emin Alper's Beyond the Hill is a master class in film making and in particular the use of sound in movies. With a soundtrack composed of only natural sounds found in nature and without any music (except at the very last scene) Alper manages to build unbearable tension.

A small landowner has punished some people living beyond a hill whose goats were grazing in his land by taking one of their goats and killing it to make a feast for his son and grand sons who are visiting him. Will those people now take revenge and what form would that be? From the moment the landowner's family arrive Alper builds up the tension expertly and manages to maintain this tension throughout the film.

In the Q&A after the screening Alper confirmed that his film is a political allegory about Turkey and its neighbors. In parts it is reminiscent of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and clearly Emin Alper is a name to watch out for.

It is an interesting movie that shows very well how Turkish people feel to live in this land. I think this is because of the education system, politicians and media in Turkey. They want us to have fears for "those people beyond the hill". They want us to hate "those people beyond the hill". They want us to kill "those people beyond the hill". Of course this is a generalization but it fits for a lot of people who lives in Turkey.

I don't agree with people who thinks that this movie is slow or boring. (If you want, you can always watch an action movie or something.) It helps you to think what is next, but you never know everything at the moment.

The film is technically a masterpiece. The long periods of silence succeeding natural sounds incorporate the viewer into the scenery and the atmosphere.

The key to the comprehension of the movie is the closeted parallel of this archaic in manners Turkish family with the modern state. What prevails is suspiciousness against imaginative external enemies as well as hidden guilt between the members of the inner family. The outcome is quite tragicomic and indicative of the obsessions and artificial dead ends which point at the "foreign" as the source of all our woes.

I also underlined the scene where the little girl with all its innocence states that we are also nomads, so "these" nomads won't do us any harm. The mature man replies that "they are bad nomads" and so differ from the morally immaculate family.

I was very fortunate that EYE Film Museum Amsterdam ran this movie during the Turkish Beat festival. Must say that I really really loved this movie. It is the sort of movie keeps you thinking within a couple days after you watch it. And I'm not talking gets you thinking out of not understanding the story but more like wanting to really know what is really "behind the hill".

The story take place in a remote village in East of Turkey where a family with complicated internal relationships constantly struggle with the villagers on the other side of the hill. You never see them but you only see their actions- or the actions that are attributed to them. From the start to the end, it's all wrapped with tensions of the unknown and how the villagers find ways to deal with them.

I do want to write so much more but I hate the spoiler reviews so I will leave it at this. For all I know, I still am not sure what was behind the hill.

Gorkem

As the debut feature of Emin Alper's dense, dominant, and politically charged cinema, Beyond the Hill is a carefully crafted film that is well-directed for a first effort, even if it bears a few production shortcomings. Sharing thematic parallels with the director's later works (excluding A Tale of Three Sisters), the film portrays how the order of a farmer and his family is disturbed by an unseen "other." The enemy, in truth, does not reside within their home, but is a paranoid specter they imagine waiting "beyond the hill."

The second act feels a little rushed; had the film been given more time to breathe and the finale handled with greater restraint, its cohesion might have been even stronger. The uneasy atmosphere of the steppe and the occasional use of horror elements add a distinctive flavor to the film.

With Beyond the Hill, Alper makes a confident debut that lays the groundwork for both his recurring themes and his cinematic language, a clear sign of the tone his later films would carry.