Allyson Hallman: Turtles Can Fly

     The most obvious diasporic situation I saw in Turtles Can Fly was that of the kids. They do have a village to come home to, but it's on the border of Iraq and Iran, not quite fully accepted in either country. Sometimes they have to travel a bit to be able to find work, like gathering mines and stacking shells, and if they want to finally be able to reap the rewards of their labor—for example, buying a TV satellite—they have to travel even greater distances. Most of the kids don’t seem to have parents (or any family, really), and some kids, like the ones in Agrin and Hengov’s community, live out of tents so they don’t even really have as much home stability as Satellite’s community does.

     I think that by focusing on these kids who have had to grow up so much so early in their lives, Ghobadi garners more sympathy for them from the audience, which I think was a good move. This is probably my (middle class) North American view kicking in here as well, because in our society, we don’t expect our kids to have to deal with missing or mangled limbs in a war zone before their teenage years, and we certainly don’t expect, much less allow them to work so hard at physical labor jobs as children. Ghobadi could have easily replaced Satellite with an adult character as the commander-in-chief of the village, but the movie probably wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Another element I thought was crucial to the film was the use of music. If I’m not mistaken, the very first time we ever hear music in the film is when Satellite first begins to pursue Agrin, at which point violin music becomes the backdrop for their relationship. When things get really bad between Agrin and the baby, at the part where she’s attempted to abandon him several times now and Hengov goes looking for him, the music suddenly becomes tense and foreboding.

     Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It was pretty heavy at times so if I were to rewatch it, I probably wouldn’t start my day off with it, but it was shot and edited very well and it certainly held my attention and gained my sympathy for the characters right off the bat.