The mIDNIGHT express

This movie most probably the most irritating movie in history for my nation. The movie, midnight Express is 1978 drama film based on Bill Hayes’s non-fictional book released in 1977, directed by Alan Parker and written by Oliver Stone who wrote the screenplay of this movie after he came back from Vietnam. 

The movie tells the story an American student, Bill Hayes, who captured at Istanbul Airport in 1970 while trying to smuggle 2 kg hashish in his body out of Turkey. Bill Hayes was prosecuted by the Turkish court and imprisoned to 3 years due to “possession” of hashish. However higher court rejected the outcome of the case by the lower court and ordered re-prosecution of Bill Hayes on “smuggling” of hashish considering the amount of hashish[1] he was trying to carry in his body. Bill Hayes re-prosecuted and the court imprisoned to 30 years when he had 53 days left to be free.  

Bill Hayes managed to escape the prison in 1975 and went back to the United States, released his book in 1977 about his original story called with the same name as the movie- Midnight Express.

Bill Hayes indicated in his recent interviews that the film significantly deviates from his story especially its portrayal of Turkish people however he had no control on the story after he sold copyrights of his book to film studio when Oliver Stone came to the picture of adding dramatic scenes to the film which is not included in the original book. Hayes also explicitly mentions in his interviews that in his book there were good Turks and bad Turks as well however in the movie there is no one you can see as good Turks.

I watched this movie 2-3 times and I think, apart from the horrible scenes filmed about Turkish people, most irritating parts was about the background you can see in the movie. In many of dramatic scenes, you could see Turkish flags, pictures of Mustafa Kemal-founder of the Turkish republic, the voice of Azan which gives subliminal messages to the audiences as all Turkish people are bad, sadist and stupid. This hate forms more material at famous court scene where you will see Turkish flag at the background Brad Davis (starring as Bill Hayes in the movie) screams to the court as follows:

“For a nation of pigs, it sure is funny you don’t eat’em! Jesus Christ forgave the bastards, but I can’t! I hate! I hate you! I hate your nation! And I hate your people! And I f*ck your sons and daughters because they’re pigs! You’re a pig! You’re all pigs!!”

Bill Hayes indicates that he felt ashamed about the mistake he did when he saw that audience in the cinema clapped and screamed so high this scene even after 30 years when the movie was represented in Cannes Film Festival, in France. 

Apart from the critics on the portrayal of Turkish people in the movie, it is also worth to mention that people act as Turkish people in the movie even can’t speak Turkish. 

Chief Judge (as Gigi Balista), Guardian Hamidou (as Paul Smith) Airport Custom Officer (as Joe Zammit Cordina) barely speaks something like Turkish which I could not understand as a native speaker. Another thing worth to mention about the movie, apart from the intro screen (5-10 seconds) you see at the beginning of the movie, none of the other places (prisons, courts etc.) is located in Istanbul as Turkish government rejected this movie filmed in Turkey. Hence, the film studio filmed this movie in Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta, Malta.

The movie significantly impacted Turkey’s tourism revenues when the film was released and sadly, for a long time and significantly contributed many people’s bad perceptions of Turkish people over the years. The film was banned for a long time in Turkey until the 1990s. The film was first broadcasted in TVs in the late 1990s and fired up the criticism and frustrations in Turkey again. 

I am not trying to convince the reader about how Turkish society and people are great. I am trying to say, none of society is great and there is no concept of bad or good societies. German society produced Albert Einstein where same produced Adolf Hitler, Colombian society produced Pablo Escobar where same produced Gabrial Garcia Marquez. Same applies to our nation. Our nation produced Orhan Pamuk and Aziz Sancar where same society produced someone who I don’t want to mention his name in this text.

Hope you can keep above in your mind while watching this movie! Enjoy if you can…

GA,

Dubai,

12 Feb 2021

Movie Link: https://www.netflix.com/ae-en/title/759396

  [1] In late interviews, Bill Hayes confirmed that he was planning to sell the hashish to his student friends in California. During the prosecution, Interpol confirmed that the market value of the hashish in New York at the time of arrestment was 50k USD. Also, Engin Elcin, worked as a police officer at the airport between 1968-1975 and the among the police officers identified hashish in Hayes’s body, indicated that |”2 kg was too much for consuming purposes as Hayes claimed at that time since consumers can carry max 2-5 gram” in a documentary called “I Was There” (Oradaydim). 

Differences between the book and the film

Various aspects of Billy Hayes’ story were fictionalized or added to for the movie. Of note:

• In the movie, Hayes is in Turkey with his girlfriend when he is arrested; in real life, he was travelling alone.
• Although Billy spent 17 days in the prison’s psychiatric hospital in 1972 in the book, he never bites out anyone’s tongue, which, in the film, leads to him being committed to the section for the criminally insane.
• The book ends with Hayes being moved to another prison on an island from which he eventually escapes by stealing a dinghy, rowing 17 miles (27 km) in a raging storm across the Sea of Marmara, traveling by foot and by bus to Istanbul, and then crossing the border into Greece.^[8] In the film, that passage is replaced by a violent scene in which he unwittingly kills the head guard who is preparing to rape him. (In the book, Hamidou, the chief guard, was killed in 1973 by a recently paroled prisoner, who spotted him drinking tea at a café outside the prison, and shot him eight times.) The attempted rape scene itself was fictionalized; Billy never claimed in the book to have suffered any sexual violence at the hands of his Turkish wardens, but engaged in consensual homosexual activity while he was in prison. However, the film depicts Hayes gently rejecting the advances of a fellow prisoner (Erich the Swede).
• There is a fleeting reference to the popular restaurant The Pudding Shop, in the bazaar. It is actually on Divan Yolu, the main avenue through historic Old Istanbul.