The Wall

There has never been a prison movie like this, but then it's doubtful that any major film-maker ever spent as long behind bars as Güney. It's not a bleeding chunk of autobiography, but an imaginative reconstruction of the events that led up to the revolt in the children's dormitory in Ankara Prison in March 1976. Yol saw all of Turkey as a kind of prison; The Wall reverses the metaphor, seeing the prison as a microcosm of the country, crippled both spiritually and physically under its fascistic government. Güney has no need of melodrama or extremes of violence or horror. He simply demonstrates the mechanisms of tyranny: the way that mindless and arbitrary routines stunt jailers and prisoners alike, creating a desperate conspiracy of ignorance and defeat. A deeply provocative vision of what happens when idealism runs out, it's not easy to watch or think about, but Güney sees it and shows it as unflinchingly as Buñuel would have done in his prime.