Milk

Milk is the second film of Semih Kaplanoglu’s trilogy Egg-Milk-Honey, in which the Turkish director sketches the progressive industrialisation of the countryside. In Egg, the middle-aged poet Yusuf returns to his village of birth to bury his mother. In Milk, Kaplanoglu also looks at changing economic and social structures in the mother-son relationship. In Milk, Yusuf is a young poet who dreams of seeing his work published, but for now earns a meagre income as a dairy man. He and his mother run a small dairy farm in the shadow of advancing apartment blocks. Yusuf, still wrestling with his attitude towards both girls and boys, is disappointed to see his mother start a relationship with the local station master. When his masculinity is put to shame because he is excluded from military service for medical reasons, their relationship is put under even more strain.
Kaplanoglu portrays a vulnerable and sensitive young man who prefers everything to stay as it was, while his mother wants to free herself from the role imposed on her through tradition. Milk is not an explicit film, however. The director portrays their lonely world in long, tranquil tableaux, occasionally juxtaposed with local superstition and accentuated by a metaphorical ending. Despite the advancing modern era, the characters and the landscape are still closely and unfathomably linked.

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