Tree of Life?

In the film, Noah Land, a son strives to honor his terminally ill father’s last wish to be buried under a tree the father planted as a child; but clashes with villagers who claim the tree is in fact a holy relic planted by Noah after the legendary flood.

According to biblical mythology, following the flood that wiped the slate clean so the created order could make a fresh start, Noah's ark drifted ashore on Mount Ararat (Geneis 8:4). Mount Ararat is a volcanic mountain in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. (Iran huh? A fresh start? There's got to be a very contemporaneous metaphor in all of that somewhere …)

On the other hand, the filmmaker, Cenk Ertürk, chose to film his own fictional tale in Harmanalani, a small mountain village in western Turkey. Speculating – or even squabbling -- how Noah and his sons might have traveled from one side of that country to the other in order to plant an ancient tree is about as worthwhile as trying to prove the legitimacy of religious beliefs and superstitions.

What makes for far more interesting and amusing speculation is to imagine what kind of conversation Noah and his sons might have had, arguing over why and where to plant the tree in the first place! That's a typical conversation between parent and child as old as the biblical legend.

Subsequently, in the filmmaker's tale 4,000 years later, a poplar on the top of a hill outside a village becomes a shrine to which hoards of pilgrims flock; in order to invoke divine favors or intercessions for all the typical kinds of fortunes and misfortunes that befall our lot. 

Ömer's misfortune is a broken heart. Unbeknownst to his father, Ibrahim, he's going through a painful divorce. The misfortune for Ibrahim is that he is ill and his days are numbers. So he has asked his estranged son to make this one last journey with him to his birthplace; to be buried under that same poplar he claims to have planted as a boy 49 years before on the land his family claims to still own.

As tour buses crowd the country road and pilgrims parade up the hill to the shrine, a carnival atmosphere ensues; as hucksters hawk their wares before the vulnerable and desperate. Unlike us mere mortals, the tree is believed to have never aged in 4,000 years.

What else that seems to have never changed is human nature's tendency to make a buck where anyone can be duped; or claims and counter-claims to a scrap of the earth no one created in the first place that can fracture human relationships between winners and losers.  When Ömer argues over land deeds with the typical bureaucratic red tape, he's told the old records were destroyed because of – wait for it – flood damage in the archive storage.

When the young imam in town hears the village gossip about the two intruders and their blasphemous request, he befriends Ibrahim and Ömer.  The imam is educated enough to know belief in the Noah tree is religious superstition. But he also knows the villager's human frailties. At one point, the imam asks Ibrahim why it's so important to be buried under that tree. Ibrahim can't explain why, only that it's the most important thing he's ever wanted. The younger imam observes,  "I think rather than what we want, how we want it is more important. I'd be skeptical of anything that's not what both heart and mind desire."

In the end, Ömer will overcome a mountain of regrets and recrimination to arrive at a point resolution; to bury the proverbial inter-family hatchet.

All these themes are aptly and sensitively portrayed in the storyline of this first feature film by this talented Turkish filmmaker. jb