"Kağıttan Hayatlar" Emotions Left on Paper

Netflix Turkey's new film, "Kağıttan Hayatlar" I stand with the investigation. I will share with you my first comments about the production starring Çağatay Ulusoy and directed by Can Ulkay.

The story of "Kağıttan Hayatlar" is based on a melodrama and psychological drama, as we know from Can Ulkay's previous films. However, this is only so on paper.

Like its name, the main character on which the entire story of the film is based, the character's emotions, the stories around it, the atmosphere, that is, everything else is just paper. This is exactly the wrong address for any emotion or experience.

Can Ulkay focuses again on a story of a man and a child. Both the high expectations and the involvement of Çağatay Ulusoy in the project increased the expectation considerably. Moreover, Ulusoy does not only take part in the movie as an actor. He is also one of the producers of the movie. He is taking on the role of Creative Producer, not the ordinary production partner. In other words, he is directly involved in the creation process of the movie. Apart from Ulusoy's acting and popularity, we have a Hollywood-standard production and visual quality. However, the cinema factory, whose fuel is not only production, visuality and acting, still does not work. Because, unfortunately, the story, side stories, and emotion of the real raw materials of this factory are not present in this movie.

The script was written by Ercan Mehmet Erdem. Erdem sought to create an emotional atmosphere by using the elements of street children and homeless people, which have an important place both in our Yeşilçam cinema, in our literary world and especially in western cinema. However, there is such a situation that he seems to be failing to add a new stone to the wall.

Mehmet's Story;

The main character, Mehmet, is a young paper collector in his thirties. He is quite sick and on the verge of death. One day, he finds a child in a paper collecting cart. She was subjected to violence by her stepfather, and her mother dropped her into her paper cart. The boy's name is Ali. Mehmet goes on the path of owning Ali, whom he hesitated to take back to his family. He tries to make him happy throughout the movie. In fact, he is starting to live his own childhood through Ali.

After a while, she aims to find her mother and save the two of them together. However, the whole story is based on a surprise through the life flow of Mehmet and Ali. I don't think it would be right to spoil this surprise here. I do not want to destroy the only source of motivation for watching the movie. Actually, this is the whole story of the movie. So the production tells a man-child story.

Let's summarize the elements that make the film viewable without talking about the story. First of all, the movie is completely based on Çağatay Ulusoy and his character. In other words, this is a project of let's walk through Ulusoy. In fact, he wants to show his competence in acting. So he just wants to reveal that he is not the star of the series, he can perform any role.

As we can see in the movie, he seeks to push the limits of his performance. This is an admirable choice for him. Anyway, we can say that there is nothing in the movie other than Ulusoy and his character Mehmet. For the sake of this purpose, we see him play big throughout the movie. He is after exaggeration and acting show. In fact, he does everything he can. We see an actor who is sick, groaning, crawling, lying on the ground, drenched in rain water.

Of course, no emotion passes to us. No matter how much he struggles for his performance, we have no counterpart. It does not touch our heart. As we know from Hollywood productions, stars take part in such movies to prove their acting. However, these are generally independent films. Because both conflicts and feelings are stronger in those movies. This is the factors that will strain the acting performance. It may be more efficient for Ulusoy to follow such a path, that is, to work with more innovative and independent directors.

Another factor is the production quality. It is more correct to call this film a project. It's a project that ranks first in the top ten for Netflix viewers. It stops wherever it wants. Everything has been thought of to make the movie great from the first time it was planned. The decor is just as it should be. The Istanbul atmosphere created looks quite eye-pleasing during the day and at night.

Let's go to the sky with the drone we saw in the series and see the beautiful view of Istanbul, everything is working except plans. At this point, it should be noted that especially. Cinema is not the art of taking beautiful photographs. You can open the beautiful photo and look at it on Instagram, or you can take your iPhone and take it. It is sad to see directors caught in this magic. However, as we said, such projects show that we are delivering world-class projects, both in terms of technical infrastructure and design know-how. Vahit Yazici should be appreciated on the decor side. It is a very difficult task to master the cinematography perspective and put it into decor and architectural designs.

To summarize, "Kağıttan Hayatlar" can give us neither emotion nor an experience of a world we do not know. You can see the answer to the question of what it serves in the top ten list. As a last word, one should ask whether this is how the paper collectors live in our country. There are people who do this as a profession. Not all of them are homeless people without a mother. So they are doing a useful job. And why do you turn these people into people who are disliked by the excluded people, as if they were thrown there?

There is no one who has a mother in the movie, everyone's mother has abandoned her and gone. Another mistake is the mothers who are blamed for leaving their children. Nobody talks about the father. These women have reasons for abandoning their children. There is male violence. Every woman with a sense of motherhood comes and finds her child, takes it and grows it, how correct is the point of view? Why is all the burden on women alone? Unfortunately, this masculine point of view does not have a healthy answer in production either.

As a last sentence, it was one of the good movies I watched recently.