Balans ve Manevra

This is a forced imitation art-house movie that is so empty and blatantly meaningless, the mind boggles. Any student movie made in Turkey deserves to go on the cinema screen more than this trite attempt by a popstar. The only redeeming quality is the carbon copy of a character in a popular Turkish comedy sitcom and the scene with him trying to make it with a tourist. Seda Akman's acting skills standout in this celluloid No Man's Land. The annoyingly misty soap opera soundtrack that crops up every few scenes is enough drive you nuts. Apparently, Teoman is someone who doesn't know what to do with his money and wanted try out acting and directing, and wanted to do it at the same time. Hopefully, he views himself as going through a learning process. Otherwise he's a lost cause.

Balans ve Manevra is a great movie about a group of people living in one of the most beautiful Aegian coast towns who, despite the serenity and the beauty of the place, just can't seem to find the "balance" that they all so desperately need in their lives no matter what "maneuver" they make. The low ratings and bad reviews are mainly due to the fact that this is not a movie that appeals to the common audience. It has a slow pace that focuses on character development instead of the story, because the characters are the story in the film and the performances across the board are simply amazing. Having seen many Turkish films in the recent recovery of the Turkish movie industry, I think I can easily say that this one has the best acting among them. Also the subtitles on the DVD are excellently translated for an English-speaking audience. I know that sounds trivial but so many Turkish movies screw this up that I think it is worth mentioning. The directing is not phenomenal and is a bit inconsistent throughout, but some scenes are really promising about Teoman's future as a filmmaker. I'm personally excited about his debut and I hope he develops and establishes his own style. He certainly did a great job of assembling an amazing cast.

To say the truth as a fan of Teoman, I was hoping a better movie from him. Actually this is his first movie and hoping too much isn't right but such a bad film doesn't suit him. Only one positive side that I notice is the processing of imagination. However there are many negative sides. First and most important one is the start of the movie. When the movie began I thought I started to watch from the middle of the movie. You can't understand what's going on for a while. The other bad fact is the scenes. They were cut very short. Also it's content is very empty. I mean, the events doesn't have a connection. To sum up, it would be a completely waste of time watching this movie.

I didn't like it when I first watched it. But when I watched it a second time, it felt better, and I understood what was missing in this film. The editing and montage are very weak. If the scenes and sequences were a bit longer, and if the order and transitions between them were better, it would actually be a good film in terms of its story, dialogue, and philosophy.

But putting together a bunch of 3-second scenes has created a disjointed flow. Most of the time, the audience is left asking, 'Why did we just see that scene?' Because of these short and abrupt transitions, viewers can't build any emotional connection. Since it's Teoman's first film, we can say he wasted what could have been a good movie due to inexperience. As the film itself says, 'First you measure the depth of the sea; if that water is too deep for you, you don't dive in...' I wish Teoman had measured first, learned how to swim and dive properly before plunging into the ocean of directing films.

So, the ingredients are good, the intention is good, the content is good, the cast is good-but there's a problem with the execution. Final note: In the film's bar scene, Hayko Cepkin performs-he probably wasn't famous at the time and appeared as an extra, which is interesting in its own right.

When I watched the movie, I liked it very much. Because I listened to all of Teoman's songs and watched his interviews. So I really enjoyed the movie. In his interviews, he had many words in the film. When I looked later, I saw that some people didn't like it. If you watch without knowing the artist, you will only focus on the events and look at the film from a narrow angle. See the movie as a singer movie. We expect more movies from Teoman.