You can gauge the grimness of a film by the number of jokes you hear once the lights go up. Not jokes made at the film’s expense, but to lighten the mood. “Well, that was a laugh-riot…,” et cetera. When Yol ended, I heard a lot of people trying to be funny.
I worry this will deter you from seeing Yol. I might further deter you by telling you the movie is old: made in 1982, and subtitled: spoken in Turkish and Kurdish. It is melodramatic, at times shamelessly so; its performances are sincere but archetypal; its dialogue, expository. But it is also a righteous masterpiece, containing one of the cruelest sequences I’ve ever seen on film. It is profound and unsparing in its tragedy. It should not be missed.
