Are you ’Bond’ enough?

It is winter, the undisputed time to go to the movies. What better way to forget your troubles: the economic crisis, the political crisis, another virginity control at a girls’ boarding houseÉ

The film is, of course, "Quantum of Solace," with Daniel Craig as "Bond, James Bond" Ğ a line he does not actually utter in this movie at all.

"You are hopelessly out of date," I am tempted to say to this cool couple. "The cinema world has discussed whether Craig was Bond enough and came to a conclusion. The guy is the new Bond, less Oxford and more Liverpool, more sentimental and has an emotional attachment to M rather than to Moneypenny."

About Turks
Ah, but there are two things, gentle reader, that you should know about us Turks: One, we are very good at debating issues ad nauseam after the rest of the world has stopped even thinking about the whole thing. Two, we like our heroes to be invincible, indestructible, totally immortal and if possible, a bit of a macho.

And if you have not discovered this already, please re-read the endless comments on Can Dündar’s documentary on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. One is inclined to think that if only there had been some scene where Atatürk narrowly escaped death in the battlefield due to supernatural powers, there would be less people who would cry out that the film offends the nation’s founder by, "showing him as too much of a mortal man."

No, we like our heroes to be super-human, in perfect health, in a body of iron. That possibly explains why our politicians, from the historical to the current, have desperately hid their illnesses from the public and tried, somewhat desperately, to appear larger than life.

The anti-hero
Then, there is the anti-hero, again to be found in the Turkish cinema: "The Isolated Man" from the young and talented director Çağan Irmak. Irmak is a prolific director who can tease the public with a romantic TV series called "Asmalı Konak" (Vine Mansion), and woo the Turkish intellectuals with his brave "Babam ve Oğlum" (My Father and Son), which takes a very critical look at the 1980 military coup. It is that movie which has placed Irmak as a very politically engaged director.

"The Isolated Man," like Orhan Pamuk’s "The Museum of Innocence," is more about love and the sign of the times than of politics. And like Pamuk’s book, Istanbul is more than a setting, it is an actual character in the plot. But here, as Dorothy Parker would say, the similarity ends.

The anti-hero, Alper, "The Isolated Man" is about a Beyoğlu restaurant-owner/chef and collector of Turkish pop records from before the 1980s known for the cheesy lyrics that focus on love, pain and loneliness. Then the lonely anti-hero meets the exuberant girl and the question hangs in the air: Will our anti-hero be able to love and in the jargon of today’s youth, be able to "connect?"

In the crowded Ankara theater, half the female population left the movie with serious mascara running down their cheeks. Some men cleaned their throats noisily, the accepted male sign of sentiment.

My companion, who only tapped his feet in a bored fashion while I sat there weeping, asked me: "Why were you so touched by the guy? I mean, he was so unreal."

I bit back a swift response about the isolation of the modern man, the metropolitan life and the inability toÉ er, connect. "It is just that he seemed more human than many men I know," I told him coldly.