Life is like a sheet of paper, which can break at any second. Hence the title of this film, chosen so carefully.
Mucadele Cizmazi Street (Alley of Survival) was the key point of the whole action.
If initially, this film had this very name, later, by changing the title to Paper Lives, it reached exactly the message that was to be sent to all viewers.
On the streets and abandoned by his own mother at the age of 8, the child Mehmet Ali masterfully played by the young Turkish actor, Çagatay Ulusoy, fails to overcome the emotional trauma caused by the abandonment of his mother.
The very name Mehmet Ali, which we will find only towards the end of the film, suggests the existence of two parallel lives. Mature Mehmet, lived through the eyes of the child Ali, in fact, one and the same person.
In addition to the fact that all their lives, street children have dreams that they will never achieve, some of them wake up to reality and discover the truth they need, and others, will deepen in depression or vain hopes.
The first listed, are the children who will overcome their dreams and will continue to lead a routine existence, accepting that they no longer have parents.
Others, especially Mehmet, will delve into the illusory world from an early age and become ill along the way, going through all the states of anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.
As he gets older, the hallucinations come back and settle more and more often in his mind, foreshadowing the gloomy end only towards the end, when we realize that in addition to kidney disease requiring a transplant, a severe form of mental illness has since taken refuge in his mind which will changes his attitude and behavior depending on the hallucinations caused by unfulfilled goals.
Mehmet, could be happy in those moments when Ali, (played by the wonderful Emir Ali Dogrul), enters through the door of the mind in his life, but also, in short time, extremely dangerous with him and those around him. He's determined to live, pursuing one extreme or the other.
The only ones who were really close to Mehmet were Gonzales' friend, played by the actor Ersin Arici, and Uncle Tahsin, the man who took care of him, played by the actor Turgay Tanülkü.
They understood his mental state, which was constantly deteriorating, and did not allow that he to be ridiculed by the other street kids.
A piece of paper can be white, blank, or full of notes, which can be memories, traumas. Like a diary.
A parallel between luxury and poverty is always made through the eyes of the mind by each of us.
The poor man, longs for a warm place and a better financial situation, and the rich man, from time to time, takes a look at those who need help.
An actor who metamorphoses into every role is Cagatay. Yes, for those who don't know him, his cry can be annoying, but I assure you that this cry exists all over the world in poor neighborhoods. If we reduce everything to silence and the lack of fatality, then we have mistaken the place where the action takes place.
Ali's breaking of the photo was, in fact, the signal that Mehmet would soon find out the truth about his childhood, the signal that it would all end, even if he tried to reconstruct the picture with duct tape.
A sick man cannot be happy, he can only imagine that he will be happy. This is why Ali enters Mehmet's imagination. But being only imagination, he can't stay with him for long, because all dreams can be dispersed at any moment.
Hence those sudden transitions from happiness to anger and sadness.
This is where man's inability to change the past comes in, because the past was once a present. And an 8-year-old child cannot change his destiny. The destiny of a child can only be changed by mature people. Every child clings to a mature man, in whom he puts his hope. And Mehmet, a mature man, failed to change anything because he reversed roles. He clung to his own destiny, but through the eyes of the child Mehmet Ali. That is, the mature man Mehmet, returned to the past through the eyes of his mind, and the despair that he could not be saved determined him to have all those reactions of anger, helplessness and deep sadness.
We can change the present, maybe the future (if we know what awaits us), but we will never change the past. The loop of time is not valid for sick and poor people, who survive by miracles.
An unhealed wound causes bleeding and pain.
The pain makes the scream go away.
Çagatay Ulusoy for me was magnificent, full of feelings that he gathered in his chest and heart , in his imagination, as real as his own existence. An existence of Mehmet that he would have liked to turn into the dream of reuniting with his family.
Feelings of love, hate, deep suffering, terror, pain and illness, imaginary happiness all this, Cagatay drew them, like no one else.
I was very impressed by all the feelings of helplessness and frustration that Cagatay Ulusoy portrayed through the role of Mehmet.
An unhealed wound is shouted! And Mehmet shouted!
The actors were magnificent and professional, talented.
A film that touches souls and moves even the most hardened hearts.
Cagatay's action is exactly as expected, bright and full of emotion.
This actor lives every role, as if it were his last moment in life.
Director Can Ulcay and screenwriter Ercan Mehmet Erdem, along with talented and versatile actor Cagatay Ulusoy, made the surprise finale, which few expected. Understanding this film can only be done at the end. Only then can you write a review.
Mehmet, a child who learned to be good by sharing with others the cakes obtained from people of the same social condition, always hoped that the money obtained from collecting garbage, cardboard, would be able to bring his mother to him. Bringing little Ali into his imagination is the most beautiful experience for him. In those moments, he was happy, because he felt that if he changed Ali's destiny, he would change his own destiny.
Exciting moments are those in which the mother's face detached from the picture from which she did not separate even at her death, always appears in her way, in the form of a mother worried about her child's illness, or taking the form of a compassionate medical sister, who has take care of Mehmet when he's in the hospital.
The whole film takes us to illusory heights, but the ending wakes us all to reality and is certainly a slap in the face to all those who, throughout the film, considered Mehmet's excessive outbursts and cries exaggerated. We cannot fail to notice that society marginalizes poor, homeless, dirty people.
This is the case all over the world, few people are really looking for some form of help for those who cry out desperately just for themselves. Those people are not heard, their cry is almost silent for those around them and they are unseen by those who have a good social condition.
Ali, is the little Mehmet who wants to climb the traces of the past and realize his priority dream that he had recorded in a diary since he was just a child. While Gonzales (Gonzo) had given up and forgotten about this wish, Mehmet, who has become an adult, continues to hope that he will respect exactly those wishes made on his birthday. The birthdays of street children are also a form of escape from everyday life and to give an alarm signal to everyone not to be forgotten, even if they do not have a real name and do not know the day they were born.
Ali embodies Mehmet at the age of 8 and, like him, faces drugs, he was trapped in this trap by those who trick him into finding his mother.
The only one who tries to awaken Mehmet to reality is old Tahsin, who suffers because of this helplessness of his favorite.
More than likely, this film raises an alarm against people's indifference, bringing to the fore this story of the child's love for his mother, who, although he abandoned him, forgave her, finding in his own subconscious, all sorts of existential excuses, for his mother.
The image of the last minutes is disturbing when we realize that the imagination can cause destructive damage to the person suffering from schizophrenia, depression, or another mental illness that replaces reality with fiction.
Only then, we realize that the actor Çagatay Ulusoy did not exaggerate at all through his feelings and that these dramas really exist. In vain some tried to infer this film by saying that it is too sad, too pathetic ... Sadness is part of the world we live in, only we prefer to ignore it.
We have seen these people, we have heard them in our countries, but we have never tried to understand them.
And this message sent by Mehmet to the whole world, turned into screaming and crying, because the inability to face a world in which the lonely and poor are ignored by society and officials, hurts like an open wound. For me, this film was also a life lesson, not just a psychological film shocking and sad.
This film is worth seeing until the last second ..
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