We Need Happiness
Director:
Warner Herzog
Year: 2010
Rating: 7.5
The Kurds have been in the news a lot lately. Their history is a tragic one
of being persecuted, betrayed, murdered, divided and erased. But they survive,
they always survive. They are broken up by national borders in Turkey, Iran,
Iraq and Syria and have been struggling for their own homeland for decades
now. And every time their hopes are raised, they are dashed. Most recently
they helped the USA fight ISIS and in return we were protecting their territory
from the Turks, the Russians and the Syrians. But again they were betrayed
by the monster sitting like a fat turd in the White House. Again, they are
on the run. Again their children are being killed. This has always been their
history.
Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov (Russian Ark) was traveling through Iraq
in 2010 when he gets stuck in a tiny insignificant Kurdish village nested
deep in the rough mountains miles away on dirt roads from what some might
consider civilization. While waiting for a car he begins to observe and document
the life in this village of mud and stone houses covered by thatched roofs,
children playing War, women making bread and meals being prepared in their
simple homes with rug covered floors and little else but a TV in the corner.
He focuses on two families in which two elderly women are the matriarchs
of multi generational large families. By telling their stories he is also
partly telling the story of the Kurds; of their hardships and their persecution.
But it is also a story of bonds that keep them together - beginning with
their family, their tribe and their faith. It keeps them strong. Sokurov
who narrates the film in mournful tones is torn between admiration for them
but also a sense of dread in that their fate is already written for them
- always to be poor, isolated and stuck in the circumstances they were born
into.
One of the matriarchs in particular has a fascinating story to tell. She
is Russian and in the 1950's she met a Kurd and against the wishes of her
family she married him and moved to Iraq in 1959. She settled in and had
children. During the war between Iran and Iraq the Iranians came into the
village and took her husband and son away and shot them. Other times the
remaining men in the village had to hide when Iraqi troops came to recruit
them into the war. After her son and husband were killed she was arrested
by the Iraqi government and sent back to Russia where she was stuck for four
years till she made her way back. Her family threw her a ten day party upon
her return and now she is old, respected and has a large family around her.
She says I have everything right here. I want nothing more. 52 minutes.
