As the Turkish director Atalay Taşdiken’s award-winning film Mommo (2009) opens, we see the elderly Kazim (Mustafa Uzunyilmaz) putting household items on a mule-drawn cart. As soon as his second wife boards the vehicle, he drives away, not even sparing a cursory glance at his cherubic little daughter Aysa (Elif Bülbül) or at his nine-year old son, Ahmet (Mehmet Bülbül), who emerges from the background. There is a yawning gap between the two kids—symbolic of the vacant space their father is leaving behind in their lives.
The two kids now stay at their grandfather’s (Mete Dönmezer) place. Grandpa is old and infirm. Fate has snatched away the working of two of his limbs, but has failed to do the same to the pride of this stoic, old man. Deep down, Grandpa knows that he is living on borrowed time, and the little savings he has accrued from his pension, which barely allow him to make both ends meet, are fast running out with the addition of these two members to his household.
A disgruntled Ahmet, angry at his father, finds himself filling up multiple shoes for little Aysa. He becomes her brother, confidante, and surrogate parent. During the beginning credit sequence, we see Ahmet carving a small boat out of a plank of wood. In reality, he finds himself inadvertently landing with the burden of carving a life for both himself and his sibling.
Life is tough for the brother-sister duo in this tiny Turkish village. The kids in the playground, led by Abidin, their stepmother’s son, taunt Ahmed telling him to go ‘play house’ with his sister than participate in a soccer match. Aysa is branded an ‘infidel’—a term, whose meaning is unknown to the wide-eyed and confused child—by the daughters of the affluent families, when she takes part in a game of hopscotch. Then there are rumours floating around that the partly-paralysed Grandpa might get married again and that Ahmet and Aysa will be sent to a children’s home.
Amidst all these adversities, Ahmet tries his best to keep Aysa happy. He builds a swing for her with a rope and a pillow for a seat; offers her his worn-out T-shirt when she gets wet while playing in a brook; tells her stories; combs her hair; and stands guard when she cleans her hair in the public bath.
There is a particularly poignant scene where the two siblings play with the wooden boat that Ahmet had crafted in the water of a makeshift dam made of stone. That dam is symbolic of the world the duo have created around them—away from the painful reality of their circumstances, a small, joyful corner of their own. But their fun is short-lived, when a villager, irate with the makeshift dam, shovels the rocks out. A helpless Ahmet and Aysa can only stare at the wooden toy sailing past them, never to come back.
At night, they sleep on the roof of Grandpa’s house, under the stars, to avoid keeping the old man awake while Ahmet answers all of Aysa’s innumerable questions in a practical, matter-of-fact manner. And more than often, he has to allay Aysa’s fear of the bogeyman, who she believes hides in the storeroom and can be seen through the hole that serves as the window.
Ahmet finds himself and his sister akin to the hollyhocks—the ‘orphan flowers’, as his mother used to call them. His only friend in the entire village is the local grocer ‘Istanbullu’ Bakkal (Mehmet Usta), who frequently gives away chocolate wafers and chewing gum to the two kids. While Ahmet puts on a brave face as he goes about his daily chores of cooking, running errands for his grandpa, and giving his sister company, the fact is he is just a nine-year old boy. So, he too, breaks down, but does so discreetly, away from the gaze of Aysa or grandpa.
Meanwhile, a ray of hope arrives for the brother and sister in the form of a letter from their aunt Fatma, who stays in Germany. She writes that she and her husband are trying hard to bring Ahmet and Aysa to join their family, but the laws of the land and the necessary paperwork are hampering them. Grandpa is trying in his own way to keep the kids happy. But, pragmatic that he is, he knows that on his old-age pension the once-in-a-month feast of kofte will soon turn out to be a luxury he will not be able to afford anymore. Pride does not allow him to keep the doors open when he makes bread, lest the neighbours get to learn that he does not have money to make a purchase from the bakery; nor does it allow him to agree to Gulseren, a lady from the village, who comes with the proposal to send Aysa to work as a servant for a rich family.
But how does a frail old man, fight with the forces of fate that are slowly, but gradually, putting him into a corner?
Born in the Konya province of Anatolia himself, Taşdiken, who also wrote the screenplay for Mommo, offers not only an insider’s view into Anatolian village life, but also draws an equally astute picture of what it is like for children to grow up in such surroundings. While there lie an innate happiness in riding a bicycle along a dusty road with one’s sister riding pillion, sleeping underneath a blanket of stars, writing a letter on behalf of one’s grandfather; there are also the tears that follow after being tonsured, the confusion that arises when one thinks the boy at the soccer field knows a secret that can jeopardise one’s and one’s sibling’s lives, and the fear when a child of nine looks into a hole in the wall staring at him, even though he has made himself believe that the bogeyman is a figment of his father’s imagination.
It will take a cynical mind not to be swayed by the sheer simplicity of the story that is Mommo; a stone heart not to want to reach out through the screen and give the angelic Aysa a tight hug; and a superhuman self-restraint not to allow a sigh escape and a lump rise in our throat when the film comes full-circle at its heart-wrenching conclusion.
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