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Am I German Enough Yet?

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via GIPHY

Max Frisch said, “We called for manpower, and what arrived was human beings.” In this scene, Hüseyin is practicing speaking German in the mirror and is having problems with adjectives, his nephew hears his practicing in the mirror and corrects it. Hüseyin’s nonchalant reaction adds humors while showing the reality. By creating the film in this way, the movie delivers some real insight how arriving in Germany and assimilating within the new culture must have felt like. Language is just one of the barriers that were faced by the guest workers in Germany. Assimilation is hard and in this film, a lot of the negative aspects of the Turks trying to fit in are seen by the viewer as fun, happy and even glamorous at times instead of the always depressive times they had to have been.

Barbershop Boogie

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I love this scene so much because it is such a wholesome and humorous way to address the issues of identity which are present throughout the film. This scene highlights not only what it means to be Turkish, but also what it means to be a man. This film handles the concept of identity through many fronts. There are questions of what its means to be German or Turkish, obviously, but there are also questions of what it means to be a man, a family, or when does someone become a part of or is lost from a family? This scene takes a little pause from all the questioning and gives a nice simple answer by saying: ‘being a Turk means enjoying the culture, and being a man means being yourself no matter what others might think’, which I think is beautiful.