The Reflection of Turtles Can Fly

The director of Turtles Can Fly is very good at presenting underclass characters in struggles and dangerous situations by using various meanings of camera shots. His characteristics in shooting and montage are simple, strong and somber.
In the first scene, the girl Agrin goes to the edge of high cliff, looking down, and then turning her head and the destination she looks back is the frame of the left; the next shot is there is an upside-down reflection in the lake that a person wearing a dark rob or a black cloak, looking like Death, walking from the frame of the right to the left, then throwing a stone to the right side. According to the Soviet montage theory, through the juxtaposition of two shots, new meanings can be created. The two successive different images are based on the reasonable and logical display. After seeing this movie, we may finally realize the meaning of the first scene, and maybe we can say the girl retrospects and recalls the behavior that she makes the baby drowned. Yet, remember the scene that what she tries to hold is a rock, not a stone. So that maybe it is not correct to say the upside-down reflection in the lake is the review in her mind. We should analyze the scene that because of the girl's experiences, which are she being raped and murdering her son, she feels deeply blameworthy. She thinks she is filthy after being raped, and is guilty because of murdering her own son. If we use the religious view of point, such female who has committed murder and sexual abuse should be thrown by stone to death by all the people. Therefore, she is going to kill herself to atone her sins. According to Mannerism, in a landscape painting the near the top of the frame can suggest ideas dealing with power and authority. On the contrary, the areas near the bottom of the frame tend to subservience, weakness, and powerless. Objects and figures placed in the bottom seem to be in danger and be dominated by those above. A landscape is seldom divided horizontally at the midpoint of a composition; otherwise, the sky would appear to oppress the earth. And the director of this movie creates the disturbing effects by letting the sky dominate heavily over the bottom. So in the scene by the high-angle shot, the unknown and mysterious view of sky like a cloak veils the little girl and the faded trees near the bottom, making everything repressed, bleak and helpless, foreshadowing the story will be about some desperate destiny. Such meaning by using high-angle shot in this movie presents at least 25 times. And when the girl jumping from the high cliff, the director uses the slow motion and fade-out to present the insecure shot, and then displaying everything from the beginning. The scene Agrin jumping is a strong main motif of this film. Every plot almost circles it around until the motif is finally revealed. After blacking the scene the movie title is shown. It is also an undertone that the title presented just after the jumping shot. We can also analyze it that the girl is like a turtle full of burdens and tries to find freedom, which means suicide and absolving. Moreover, I think the turtle mean the land mines. Not only does the mine looks like a turtle from the appearance, but also the image that even though those mines are hurtful to children, children might still take them as trading products. Mines are lethal burdens like heavy shells to children in daily lives, and yet mines are also things to keep them earning money and living safely like giving them wings to fly. So poetic and ironic!
The director likes to use the telephoto lens to get Agrin's close-up from extreme distance, producing the atmospheric effect that is used for symbolic meaning. The objects placed before and beyond that distance blur, go out of the focus formalistically. Therefore, we can clearly and only pay attention to her struggle observed form her facial appearance.
The director follows the way that the Italian directors after WWII liked to use the nonprofessional performers to prove the reality of the local society. But we have to distinct the difference between realism and reality. Realism is a particular style, and the physical reality is the source of all the raw materials of film, both realistic and formalistic. Therefore, as we can see from at least 25 high-contrast-angle shots and frequent Agrin's close-up, the director of Turtles Can Fly shapes and manipulates the reality to make the movie formalistic. In 4 sections which are Satellite takes plenty of radios to exchange a satellite, going to the cartridge ground, buying weapons in the market, and the panic first-person point of view of the armless boy searching for his sister, the director still wants to show the documentary way by hand-held shots based on realism. And sometimes, using bird's-eye shots at the moment of destiny's greatest impact in Turtles Can Fly make us to hover above a scene like all-powerful God. The refugees photographed seem ant-like and insignificant. Besides, in order to highlight the status of Satellite in crowd, the director uses the obvious low-angle shot in every scene. And when the American armies invade their country, the camera shoots the tanks by extreme low-angle shot. Except using the high-contrast angle shots, in most time the scenes in the movie are always filmed by child's eye-level shots, making audience to use their innocent perspectives to observe their brutal world.
Also, the director presents the two triangles in the composition which are the one Satellite and his two charming followers and the other the armless boy, Agrin and her baby. Using triangular designs visually, the film deals with the two sets of trio of characters whose relationships are shifty and interrelated. Moreover, isolated figures and objects, like the armless boy and Agrin, tend to be heavier than others in a group in images. The armless boy and his sister move away from the camera very frequently. Such movement away from the camera tends to mean being weak, fearful, suspicious, and remote from others in the movie and from audience. So such movement arouses other characters and audience's curiosity to find out their backgrounds, making the armless boy's family become a main motif in this movie.In this movie, the scenes the characters move from right to left mean they are active, energetic, and hopeful, like the beginning Satellite talking to the elder on the hill, Satellite pursuing Agrin on the road, and so on. On the other hand, the scenes the characters move from left to right intend to they are desperate, frustrated, and hopeless, such as the scene that in the first shot Agrin going to jump from the cliff, and the final shot that Satellite is disappointed to everything, moving away from the camera. And there is a scene in the beginning that an elder whining that their lives are in misery. The elder moves out of the depth of the scene in an uninterrupted long take, making us feel slow, tedious, hopeless and restless as the elder feels.
Therefore, the director not merely wants to present a realistic misery in the story, but using strong and formalistic style to display the visual techniques intensify the meanings of the story as well.