I liked the thoughtful pace of the film and its well done production on a low budget. There is dry humor here and there. The portrayal of roles in a patriarchal society is well done. The interactions between bus owner and employees are simple yet very telling.

The character of Seher as written is problematic from my American perspective, but I think it may represent the confused feminism of a society still bound to patriarchal religion and family structures. It seemed to answer a long-asked question in my mind about intelligent and well educated women in Islamic societies. Seher should know better about pregnancy and the consequences, but does not. She should have addressed her pregnancy earlier, but did not. She is an immobilized conformist.

Nihat, the watcher, seems to represent the angry conformist, who is awakened by the losses he has suffered yet is still trapped in a male society without true compassion. He is frustratingly well played by Olgun Simsek.

The ending seemed less profound than expedient. These lives were made pointless by the characters' inability to see beyond the horizons offered by culture and tradition. I am not sure this was the point of the film, but it certainly left me with that impression.

Screen play, lightning and art is very good. We definitely need more footages about characters past life.

The story of THE WATCHTOWER is a compelling one: Nihat (Olgun Simsek) takes over as a guard in a lonely watch-tower in Central Anatolia, living entirely alone except for occasional communication via radio with his fellow-guards. He has lost his wife and child in an accident and shuns company as a result. Seher (Nilay Erdonmez) has taken a job as a "hostess" with a small bus company; it soon becomes clear that she has abandoned her life as a student. She has been raped by her uncle, and is now pregnant, even though she dare not tell anyone. Eventually she has the baby in a lonely room and abandons it in the bus station forecourt. Nihat and Seher are brought together as Nihat rescues the baby and takes Seher in; however, the two of them find it difficult, almost impossible to get along. As two of life's misfits, they prefer solitude, with the power of self-determination. In structural terms, however, THE WATCHTOWER is a bit of a mish-mash; it begins with the kind of long, lingering shots of a landscape with one character moving within the frame characteristic of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films; it subsequently includes the kind of interior shots with washed-out colors reminiscent of Zeki Demirkubuz; and ends with a melodramatic plot straight out of Atif Yilmaz's SELVI BOYLUM AL YAZMALIM (1978), the classic love-story starring Turkan Soray. The ending is a total cop-out, as it shows Nihat looking out into the desolate landscape, while not telling us anything about Seher. While being an admirer of Esmer's previous work, I have to say that THE WATCHTOWER is is perhaps her least satisfying effort.