Film marches to the beat of a Turkish drummer.
If there were as many films set in Turkey's biggest metropolis as there are in the United States', the aerial shots that introduce
Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
might look hackneyed. But Istanbul is relatively unexplored territory-not only for the American filmgoer, but director and onscreen narrator, Fatih Akin. Akin is of Turkish descent,
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but he was born in Germany, so his exploration of Istanbul parallels that
of the Turko-German central characters in his fierce 2004 art-house hit,
Head On
. As for Alexander Hacke, the Einstürzende Neubauten veteran who guides the musical tour, he made his first trip to Turkey when he was working on
Head On
's score.
Armed with digital-recording gear, the easygoing and ever-curious Hacke explains that he's there to document a range of Turkish music. Hacke quickly finds himself filling in on bass with Baba Zula, a psychedelic-rock band grooving gently on a Bosporous barge, and then meeting various rockers, rappers and trip-hoppers.
Duman, whose lead singer spent time in grunge-era Seattle, plays protest punk that recalls Dead Kennedys. The members of art-punk band Replikas pay homage to Turkish rock pioneer Erkin Koray, whose guitar solos owe much to Hendrix but whose songs are not far removed from traditional folk numbers. It's a device
Crossing the Bridge
uses repeatedly: The accolades of young musicians lead to their precursors, including veteran singer-songwriter and action-flick star Orhan Gencebay,
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vocalist and one-time movie goddess Sezen Akzu and 86-year-old orch-pop singer Müzeyyen Senar. These glimpses of older styles are bolstered by clips from vintage movies.
Akin's fluid segues and Hacke's enthusiasm drive the film, which is lively and meticulously constructed. Sometimes the locomotion comes at the cost of explanation. We meet whirling dervishes without any introduction to the Sufi traditions that underlie their dance. Kurdish singer Aynur tells of being attacked for singing in her native language, yet the politics of Kurdish identity in Turkey are barely addressed.
Crossing the Bridge
is, in short, a rather rough guide to Turkish music. The performance snippets are sometimes too fleeting to provide much feel for the artists, and it's impossible to say whether the younger musicians are representative or just people Akin and Hacke happened to encounter. Of course, a sense of serendipity is part of the film's appeal. The director and his guide could have attempted a more definitive study, but a more academic report wouldn't have benefited from this movie's amiable twists and asides-or ended with its own Madonna song, a Turkish version of "Music."
