A View of The Sea – The Four Walls Review

The Four Walls, from writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (script co-written by Hamed Habibi), explores very difficult subjects, guilt, and grief. The basic premise is on the day Boran (played by Amir Aghaee) was bringing his wife (who hasn’t been well) and child to the apartment he acquired in Istanbul, they are in a horrific car accident that takes the lives of the wife and son.

How are these themes explored? Both through the accident itself and through a device. The apartment Boran was moving them into he had chosen because his wife loved the sea, despite having never seen it before, and the apartment had a view of the sea. When he awakens from the accident five months later to not only find out his family is dead but that an apartment building has gone up stealing his view of the sea, he goes to war to fight the injustice of it.

Guilt: He had taken his eyes off the road to try and surprise his wife with her first view of the sea.

Guilt: If he never got the apartment in the first place, maybe they would both still be alive.

Guilt: To get the apartment, he worked killing seagulls at the airport, but had accidentally killed a crane. Which they aren’t supposed to do, and they say when you kill one, you kill two because you’ve killed their mate as they can’t bear to live without their pair.

Then the film parallels this with the young man who hit Boran’s car, and his mother, Aral (played by Funda Eryigit).

Guilt: Son has guilt over the accident he caused.

Guilt: Aral has guilt because she and her husband got the car for their son.

Prior to the reveal of the son and mother from the other car, I was unsure why they gave Boran a son as all his grief seemed to center on his wife. But they wanted to counter the losses in the cars. In Boran’s car, the only survivor was the father. In the other car, the only causality was the father.

Grief was interesting and hard in its exploration. Boran was alternatively in denial about his family being gone (making tea for them) and speaking of their deaths, be it via police reports or otherwise. He also focused on fighting for getting the view back, no matter how many times people told him it was impossible, tried to reason with him, or even gaslight him. His methods were often very angry, and usually targeted people that were as powerless as him. While I didn’t like him in those moments, I understood his impotence and desire to just scream at something.

Aral also sought confrontation by inserting herself in Boran’s life and trying to insert her son too. And you understand her perspective as a mother who feels guilty that her son is hurting, but you also get so angry at her actions because she is thrusting her family’s guilt and need for forgiveness onto Boran. Even if she tries to get him to forgive himself, it’s all very messy.

My favourite pairing in the film, and one I wish they had explored more, was Boran’s with the Muezzin (played by Onur Buldu)  because it allowed us to see different aspects of his character. It was also the other side of the coin for the action-reaction of the rest of the film. Filmmakers/Storytellers are always looking into cause and effect, action and reaction. The inciting incident that starts the movie/show. In this film, and for Boran, it was the car accident. However, for the Muezzin, his inciting incident happened earlier when Boran asked him to stop with the loud call to prayer and maybe move to a text. It changed this man’s life, it also got him fired. But he wasn’t upset. Boran brought this man into his band of musicians, where he seemed to thrive.

The music in The Four Walls was also amazing. It was the heartbeat of the film, driving the action, and played at key moments of joy and pain. Be it when Boran’s apartment is ready to be moved into, when his friends stand with him as he makes his most vocal (musical) stand against the new apartment building, or during the pivotal car crash.

Speaking of the car crash, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the cinematography in The Four Walls, particularly as it relates to capturing the car crash which I found particularly arresting. I was floored by it, but it was the final shot of the sequence, the wide, as it expanded from the car accident to show the sea behind that just did me in.

The Four Walls had its world premiere at the 34^th Tokyo International Film Festival.