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Sunday, November 25, 2012

HOLLYWOOD SPY EXCLUSIVE SPOTLIGHT ON LAVISH TURKISH EPIC "CONQUEST 1453" OR "FETIH 1453" ON THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE!

Here's something epic and exotic for you at the same time today: a spotlight on lavish historical epic CONQUEST 1453 or FETIH 1453 coming to us from Turkey. Turkey has had a number of successful television and movie projects in recent years, mostly due to the fact that they can sell and present them to hundreds of millions of viewers in other Muslim countries around the world who share tradition and culture with them. This ambitious project, depicting the infamous Turkish invasion of Eastern Roman capital Constantinople which lead to the beginning of many centuries of bloodshed and darkness in that part of the world, had its premiere earlier this year in 
 Turkey, USA and in some European countries. Although visually spectacular, the blockbuster film was largely criticised for nationalism, for overly gentle depiction of Ottoman tyranny and for many historical inaccuracies (Constantine XI, who mostly lived in celibate is shown as a hedonist; Constantinople is depicted overly magnificent even though it had been comprehensively sacked by western crusaders in 1204; sappers tunnelling under the immense land walls that had not been breached in
1,000 years, are shown as proud Muslims but in reality they were captured Serbian miners brought there to toil as slaves).

FETIH 1453 STORY
The story of the film is set in the year of 1453, when the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was surrounded by Ottoman Turks. The city was but a shadow of its former glory due to the empire's ever receding coffers,
while the Ottoman Empire continued to grow rich. After years of tolerating the existance of Byzantium, the ambitious and warlike sultan, Mehmet II (Devrim Evin) launched his campaign to end the Byzantine Empire and take Constantinople for the Ottomans, resulting in arguably the greatest siege of that age. Before launching the invasion, Mehmet II had restored Gallipoli dockyard so that 100 galleys could be produced there in a year. Meanwhile Roman Emperor Constantine deemed Sultan Mehmet inexperienced and he didn't see a threat in him since Turkish prince Orhan was Constantine's
captive at that time. After uniting his armies, Mehmet II sent a messenger to Emperor Constantine declaring that he would no longer send the subsidy he had been paying for Orhan. After that, he started the building of the Rumelian Fortress across the Anatolian Fortress in the European side of Bosforus. This actually meant that he was declaring war against Eastern Roman Empire. This circumstance came to European states’ attention too. But to help Eastern Roman Empire was almost impossible because of the war between French, English and
German Kings who had their throne fights. Pope’s attempts remained inconclusive too. And then on April 2nd 1453, the Byzantine soldiers on the ramparts saw Sultan Mehmet arriving with thousands of Turkish soldiers…
STORY FROM HISTORY
Mehmed the Conqueror was only 21 when he conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire, absorbing its administrative apparatus into the Ottoman state. Later on Mehmed continued his conquests in Asia, with the Anatolian reunification, and  
in Europe, as far as the Kingdom of Serbia. Although Mehmed II is regarded as a national hero in Turkey the people of the conquered nations regard him as a bloodthirsty tyrant who wrapped them in centuries of darkness throwing their cultural and national development
in deep setback and enslaving half of the world under his rule. Even though he circled the city with his warships and used new type of cannons to destroy the walls, the city fell only after a two month siege when Mehmed managed to transport a number of his ships overland
 in order to surround the whole Constantinople. Some years after that Mehmed II visited the site of Troy and boasted that he had avenged the Trojans by having conquered the Greeks (Byzantines)! He also claimed
he was a new Caesar of Rome, but nobody acknowledged him the title. He did manage to perform administrative and legal reforms thus bringing prosperity to Ottoman Empire. As with a number of other Turkish sultans, it is suspected that he was poisoned by his own son Bayezit.

23 comments:

  1. Every movie ever made about history is full of historical inaccuracies. History always bows to drama.

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    1. and it also bows to politics and money :( All the news you hear today on TV are bought for money and fabricated for money, we haven't learned anything :(

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  2. This one is definitely something the men in my family would be interested in seeing. They love history such as this.

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  3. The bias on this is appalling. Serbia had to put up with such horrors for about 500 years I think (correct me on that if I'm wrong darling). They halted your advances in the development of thriving urban areas, enslaved you, beat you and left you with nothing other than rural subsistance farming.

    Did Serbia finally defeat the Ottoman Empire in 1918 or thereabouts. I'm not sure on that one.

    We had British rule us for 700 years and didn't get a free state until 1922.

    We had it bad, but you guys had it worse and there's no way in hell I'm going to watch this film.

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    1. yep, the Turks invaded Serbia after famous Kosovo battle in 1389 in which they killed our King Lazar and half of the nobles. Believe it or not, Lazar's daughter princess Olivera had to marry Turkish sultan Bayazit after the battle in order to save Serbia at least in some way, even though he killed her father and enslaved her country. Serbs did manage to kill Bayazit's father sultan Murat during the battle.
      We did organize two huge revolts in the 19th century and to free our country in the same century.
      Ireland had similar, sad destiny :(

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    2. 1912 and 1918 for you I think. For us 1916 and 1922.

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    3. no, darling, we had First Serbian Uprising in 1804 after which we were independent for about a decade and then occupied again, and after Second Uprising in 1815-1817 we won independence. We gained complete independence in 1878 in the Treaty of Berlin when we became Kingdom of Serbia.
      You have in mind Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) which was formed in 1918 and lasted till the Nazi occupation in WW2.

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    4. Thank you for straightening that out for me. There have been so many invasions by foreign powers in your region and land has been divided and redistributed that I do get confused. We were not taught the history of your country even at University. What is taught is selective and often incorrect as well.

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    5. It's true darling, but I think that the modern problem isn't only that we don't know much about other traditions and histories, but most people don't know much about their own histories either :(

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    6. Biased probably, but as far as empires have gone the Ottomans were without doubt much more lenient. Serbs are pretty quick to complain about their conquest and while being conquered is hardly something nice there have been much worse. The Ottomans were also ahead of most of world in terms of science and tolerance so to claim that they halted the development of Serbia is just untrue. They were not the Vatican, no matter how much you may will it.

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  4. Wow, it may be historically inaccurate, but visually it's very exotic and beautiful. I kind of liked the battle scenes, but you know how I am about that stuff. :))

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    1. yep, it is rather lavish, although the film was criticized in its homecountry of having cheap special effects, but having in mind that European movies don't have a tenth of Hollywood budgets, it looks quite good.

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  5. Whew this is quite a history ~

    The battle scenes from the trailer reminds me of LOR...but still gory for my liking ~

    Have a good weekend Dezz~

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    1. I do love historical posts :)
      Wishing you lovely weekend as well, Heaven :)

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  6. Very interesting period in history, and totally worth a watch...I hope!

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  7. I love historical epics even though I'm never sure about the accuracy of them. They do tend to take dramatic license.

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    1. they're almost never accurate, Melsy, it's very difficult, if ever possible, to get to the truth in today's world

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  8. Looks goo; my kind of movie. It is shown in English?

    .......dhole

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    1. it was shown in USA and it's possible you can find a DVD of it and it has English subtitles of course :)

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