Let the Music Play

Director Nesli Colgecen has a special place in Turkish cinema history. Especially the wonderful social satires "Zugurt Aga" (The Broken Landlord 1985) and "Selamsiz Bandosu" (The Selamsiz Band 1987), one might expect his latest film, "Calsin Sazlar" (Let the Band Play), starring some of the most prominent acting talent in Turkey today, to be on par with the above-mentioned classics. This film harbors a great premise, a marvelous story and occasionally some hard-boiled comedy.It all starts in modern-day Istanbul when a young man starts speaking to an unidentified person. We assume that the boy is talking to a psychiatrist, but it later turns out that the case is not so much clinical, as it is personal. Apparently, the boy's extended family is selling their 50-year-old house, which was bought by and still belongs to Grandfather Mahir (Can Kolukisa). Mahir is a highly devout man; he's 84 years old, and seems to have accepted that his son and daughter need the money from the sale. Unfortunately, things start going wrong when the family sits down to close the deal at the land registry office; the old man starts experiencing mild amnesia and the officials ask the family to get an official sanity report for their beloved patriarch. The good doctor taking care of Mahir puts it simple and easy: Mahir is experiencing dissociative personality syndrome and thinks that he's a Greek Orthodox tavern owner who is in dire need of Turkish Raki. —Gözde Yolcu