Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite has the kind of shiny-eyed, soft-cheeked and bird-voiced child that you want to adopt right away. Indeed, the adorable Baris – named after a Turkish rock star – has many claimants.
Baris (Ozan Bilen) is lodged at a jail in Ankara along with his mother. His father has stopped visiting them, which makes the boy sad on occasion. But he is compensated many times over by the affection shown by the other inmates, especially the political prisoner Inci (Nur Surer).
Baris is always running after Inci. She patiently addresses his endless questions, explains the difference between a bird and a pater kite and hugs him ever so often. Ours is a love story, Inci’s voiceover says, and she isn’t kidding.
Tunc Basaran’s Turkish production, made in 1989, was restored by MUBI, the arthouse cinema company founded by Turkish-American businessman Efe Cakarel. Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite is available on MUBI in India in the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, which, depending on its usage, can invoke nostalgia or claustrophobia.
In this movie, the framing style is strikingly used to portray a world that is circumscribed but also filled with restless movement. Basaran’s script is based on Feride Cicekglu’s memoir of her time spent behind bars. Set in Turkey a few years after a military coup, the movie mounts a firm resistance to authoritarianism.
The prison is a strangely designed tower-like structure that’s straight out of an old German Expressionist film. Women of different ages and temperaments are crammed inside various rooms that they spill out of ever so often. They cross the floors, go up and down the various levels and pace in the narrow compound, always seeking ways out of their confinement.
The tight compositions draws us close to the women, as they do to the criminally cute Baris. It’s sometimes hard to believe that the actors are faking the warm smiles and moist eyes when Baris enters their rooms – which he does only after announcing himself.
The women fight on occasion but unite before their oafish jailer, who tries to divide them every now and then. In a brilliant scene, the jailer tears up a forbidden book, asks a guard to burn it, asks a second guard to ensure that the book is burnt and then asks a third employee to supervise the second.
It’s the only absurdist touch in an another otherwise realistic narrative. The film makes a stand for individual freedom firmly and yet subtly. Baris doesn’t realise it yet, but his encounters with Inci constitute his first political awakening.
Played by Ozan Bilen with an utter lack of self-consciousness, Baris is one of the most memorable children ever seen in the movies. The cherubic face, the grown-up walk, the confusion when he doesn’t get his way – the boy melts Inci’s heart and everybody else’s.
