*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about this movie. It won the Golden Bear in Berlin, but, first, it's a German co-production (so, who knows...) and second, festival winners are not always the movies that bowl me over.
After having seen it, I must say that I am very touched. The reviews about the movie always focus on the beautiful and calm storytelling and the awesome Anatolian landscapes. But in my view it's primarily a chamber play with a quite depressing story. The young boy Yussuf suffers from strong stuttering. The only person he opens to is his father, a beekeeper. Only with his father the boy can communicate, he whispers complete sentences and expresses his feelings. At the end of the movie, the son will realize that his father died in the woods, the last screen showing the child sleeping under a giant dark tree.
The acting from the boy is superb. There are many heartwarming scenes, especially when the boy sees his mother crying and drinks a cup of milk (what he normally hates to do), looking hopefully at her afterward, as if his self-conquest could change anything about the cruel situation. In this scenes the movie really manages to take us into the child's world.
What makes the movie a little irritating is not only the slow rhythm (that helps to create those real-life magic moments) and the very few dialogue, but also the lack of emotional gestures, especially between Yussuf and his mom. If the director of the film would have been let's say Michael Haneke, it would surely not be interpreted as a hymn to (natural) life, but as a sober analysis of failed communications.
Finally, if you generally do not like slow and minimalistic movies, don't watch this one. It's breathtaking slowly, and very many and very long scenes will only show the boy looking around an empty room with big eyes. All in all, Honey is a naturalistic child drama offering enough space and time for free associations and deep feelings. It's surely recommendable to watch it in a cinema. Although it's overall great done, you might not stay awake until the end when lying on a soft couch at home.
I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about this movie. It won the Golden Bear in Berlin, but, first, it's a German co-production (so, who knows...) and second, festival winners are not always the movies that bowl me over.
After having seen it, I must say that I am very touched. The reviews about the movie always focus on the beautiful and calm storytelling and the awesome Anatolian landscapes. But in my view it's primarily a chamber play with a quite depressing story. The young boy Yussuf suffers from strong stuttering. The only person he opens to is his father, a beekeeper. Only with his father the boy can communicate, he whispers complete sentences and expresses his feelings. At the end of the movie, the son will realize that his father died in the woods, the last screen showing the child sleeping under a giant dark tree.
The acting from the boy is superb. There are many heartwarming scenes, especially when the boy sees his mother crying and drinks a cup of milk (what he normally hates to do), looking hopefully at her afterward, as if his self-conquest could change anything about the cruel situation. In this scenes the movie really manages to take us into the child's world.
What makes the movie a little irritating is not only the slow rhythm (that helps to create those real-life magic moments) and the very few dialogue, but also the lack of emotional gestures, especially between Yussuf and his mom. If the director of the film would have been let's say Michael Haneke, it would surely not be interpreted as a hymn to (natural) life, but as a sober analysis of failed communications.
Finally, if you generally do not like slow and minimalistic movies, don't watch this one. It's breathtaking slowly, and very many and very long scenes will only show the boy looking around an empty room with big eyes. All in all, Honey is a naturalistic child drama offering enough space and time for free associations and deep feelings. It's surely recommendable to watch it in a cinema. Although it's overall great done, you might not stay awake until the end when lying on a soft couch at home.