Review of Hatıran Yeter, directed by Ömer Faruk Yardimci

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Call this a regular phase of corporate America and adulting, but I want to find a balance and go back more to the things I love. Today’s blog post comes from something I watched on a flight back from Istanbul to Washington. Going to Istanbul I didn’t watch a ton of movies because it was an overnight flight, but coming back I was wide awake and ready to watch as many movies as I could cram in.

I wanted to watch at least one Turkish movie, and I landed on Hatiran Yeter. I had zero expectations going into this, and while I did not hate it, I certainly found it to be quite the ride throughout.

Let’s get into the review!

A deaf and mute boy meets a girl like him, and falls in love with her after she teaches him how to communicate.

Lots to unpack with this movie in general, but we begin with Baha, the male lead, telling the story of how his parents met. This is a solid chunk of the first part of the movie, and we see how their romance was sweet and full of great moments, even when his mother’s father disowned her for loving his father.

The two start over their lives as a married couple away from his grandparents’ watch, and they have a beautiful little boy: Baha. But when Baha falls ill with a fever one day, his father doesn’t fetch the doctor immediately. That proves to be an awful mistake, as when they reach the hospital later, Baha’s hearing was taken away with his illness.

His parents don’t really know how to raise a boy that’s deaf, and Baha lives his life isolated away from other kids his age. His father has him working with the local mechanic to learn a skill that would actually bring money in. It’s there that Baha will work for the rest of the movie, and he never receives an education like the other kids.

It’s when he’s playing with his good buddy in the streets, in a car, that he meets Leyla for the first time. She’s from a wealthy family, and while she’s deaf like him, she has the money to afford an education that taught her how to read and use sign language.

While he’s excited to find someone like him, she starts teaching him how to read and write, as well as sign language. His parents are thrilled to see the progress, but when Leyla’s break ends, he’s devastated when she tells him that she’s not coming back again. However, when the next break happens, she’s back in town.

The story of Baha and Leyla proves to be one that’s also full of sweet moments, and it almost mimics the sweetness of his parents’ love story as they grow older. However, this is a Turkish romance movie that mirrors the dramas we all know and love, so their romance is something that is going to be meddled with from external forces.

I had a bit of a whiplash from the last section of the movie. If you’re someone who can’t handle tension and cries a lot, then you might want some tissues.

Overall Thoughts

This certainly was quite the ride to watch, and I only took a break in order to eat some food the flight attendant was passing out around the sixth or seventh hour of the flight. I like to think she was judging me for watching this movie, but in reality she was probably just ignoring what was on everyone’s screens.

Anyway: I’m used to the classic drama elements and even watch Turkish dramas, but I found this movie to be a little too much. I don’t care if an ending is sad or not, but I thought the way this movie went was so random and out there—in a disjointed way that didn’t make sense—that it felt like trauma mining for Baha’s depression.

Regardless, I did have a good time watching this and binge watched it on the flight, so do what you will with that information. I also thought the representation was quite interesting for Turkish cinema and entertainment. I’ve never seen a show or movie with deaf and/or mute characters, and this felt like a real shot at humanizing them (albeit forcing tragedy onto these characters at the same time).

Go watch it if you want to give the movie a chance. I don’t know where it exists on the English language side of the Internet, as I’ve only encountered it on the Turkish Airlines flight, but if you can find it and want to watch the movie, give it a chance!

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