Masumiyet

Turkish filmmaker Zeki Demirkubuz exploded onto the international scene with this extraordinary sophomore feature which won him a legion of admirers, and detractors, across Turkey as well as top prizes at the Antalya Golden Orange and Adana Golden Boll International Film Festivals and inspired a prequel a decade on.

Güven Kiraç puts in a wonderfully nuanced performance as the painfully lost sole at the centre of this narrative with powerful support from Derya Alabora and Haluk Bilginer, who both won Golden Orange awards for their performances, and the young Melis Tuna who gives a pitch perfect debut performance.

The contemporary director has a curious fascination with the sort of characters so often sidelined by Turkish filmmakers eager to show their country at its best and this comes through in his use of language, somewhat lost in subtitle translation, and the carefully woven back-story, which inspired a prequel, that drive this compelling film forward.

Let's get out of this place.

Set in the seedier areas of İzmir, Ankara, and İstanbul, MASUMİYET focuses on Yusuf (Güven Kıraç) who is released from prison after ten years but fears the outside world. Having been given the name of a suitable contact, he travels to İzmir to stay in a seedy hotel and encounters musician Bekir (Haluk Bilginer), Uğur (Derya Alabora), and her deaf-mute daughter Çilem (Melis Tuna). Yusuf becomes friendly with the family but by doing so becomes involved in a peripatetic existence fraught with danger that leads to death and disillusion.

Several of the themes characteristic of director Zeki Demirkubuz's work resurface here. There are several shots of darkened rooms, that are instantly filled with shafts of light at the center of the frame as doors are opened, and return to darkness once more as the doors are closed. Such shots metaphorically summarize the protagonists' lives as consisting of unremitting darkness penetrated by shafts of light. Yet they are only occasional; for the most part the characters are prisoners of their existences, as shown by the repeated use of metal or iron bars through which we view the characters, or which form a backdrop to individual scenes.

This hopelessness is contrasted with the idealized lives portrayed on the almost continuous Yeşilçam films from the Sixties and Seventies that are broadcast on the televisions in Yusuf's hotel and other public places. These broadcasts have an almost magical-like power to attract the guests' interest, to such an extent that the hotel owner (Doğan Turan) keeps encouraging Yusuf to set his troubles aside and watch television, a cup of tea in his hand. The televisual world is an uncomplicated one of good triumphing at evil's expense; where justice is meted out and the path of true love is clearly defined. Such moral absolutes prove a welcome respite from the stresses of daily life.

Yet Demirkubuz shows how fiction and "reality" can become confused, as Uğur's face appears on television as part of a news broadcast. Unable to separate the two, Çilem watches the screen with the same fascination as with the Yeşilçam melodramas. We understand, however, that television has the power to distort people's view of the world, even while providing some form of narcotic for viewers.

The characters live rootless lives, as symbolized by the repeated point of view shots showing public buses traveling along deserted roads, full of passengers, and only stopping occasionally for half- hour food breaks. Yusuf would like to achieve stability, but finds himself unable to do so; his sister will not even speak to him, while his brother-in-law (Ajlan Aktuü) has been rendered half-crazed by a sterile marriage. Hence Yusuf has to move on with Cilem in tow, first to Ankara and then to İstanbul.

Yet life isn't much better in either city. Yusuf has been given a name, but finds that the person concerned is not there, as he visits Ankara. He goes to a seedy disco (ironically called "The King's Disco"): grand it certainly ain't. Traveling on to İstanbul, he moves through Beyoğlu's netherworld of cramped streets and darkened, deserted houses, whose windows are almost invariably lined with iron bars.

There is no sense of resolution in MESUMİYET; as the epigraph (from Beckett's suggests), the characters always lose, however much they try. The only thing they can hope for is to become better losers.

Innocence is a different Turkish film as it does not rely much on a visual style which is found in other Turkish films which have made their mark on international film festival scene. In this film, director Zeki Demirkubuz has filmed the tragic lives of ordinary people who don't have much left in their midst to improve their situation. In cinema, it is often shown that a character X leaves a place Y in order to go to Z. It is Yusuf, a main protagonist who experiences something similar as he is not able to finish his journey. However, he does not feel disappointed as he gets to learn that he has been useful to some people in his life. Innocence starts with a very unusual request made by an innocent man who has been released from prison. It is from that moment that the film creates its impact by depicting how Yusuf's life would change when he is going to come across vulnerable characters from small Turkish towns where life seems to have stopped for good. Lastly, viewers get to learn that Zeki Demirkubuz takes his cinema seriously as his film is a nice tribute to richness of Turkish cinema which is welcomed by this film's different characters when they sit quietly to watch classics of Turkish cinema on television.

An f word: Demirkubuz is maybe the only director in nowadays Turkey, who bothers himself with the everyday life, or life in general, of the so-called damned. This is one of the most obvious features of his filmography. Lives that are hidden behind the curtains, which go on when 'we', the 'ordinary' people sleep or work, or lives which we read about in the newspapers and blame (much more the case) or appreciate them. Lives that are not familiar with some words like big money, stocks, career, future plans, fame or how it is called in Turkey: pacayi siyirmak (similar to get off the hook). Those characters do not have or make plans for the next few months: they try to live the next day through, and as in Masumiyet, some decide to not to. There are always spontaneously opening doors in life, and it depends on you as the observer, or the reader-watcher of those "far away lives" to try to understand or to tell between seeing and looking. Masumiyet is a lecture for this, too.

The acting: Haluk Bilginer, one of the most famous and also well playing actors of Turkey really had better performances. Derya Alabora, quite well acting and let me no words to say. And, Guven Kirac. You can observe how a talented actor can act. He is that successful in acting in this movie that his playing builds up a big shadow over the whole scene going on through this film. He and the others mentioned are quite fine and professionally acting, which gives this film a taste of artificiality; something you might understand when you watch Kader (2006). The Story: both at the same time: minimalist and extraordinary. An important critic of TV in our everyday life is mixed in this descriptive narration. The directing: superb. Demirkubuz, might be regarded as a bridge between Dogma "philosophy" and Italian neo-realism. But certain scenes exist which interrupt the fluency of the film. When Yusuf (Guven Kirac) and the little girl (also referenced unnecessarily to Chaplin's The Kid in the film) arrive in Ankara and go to the place called KralDisco, there is a song in the background of the kurdish music group "Koma Amed". One can think that this music comes from inside of that place, but a sort of music which is totally unrelated to such places. This scene turns a trivia to a goof.

Finally: Demirkubuz managed to open an anti-heroic era in Turkish cinema, after the long lag of Yilmaz Guney (ceased in 1984). Lives of the outsiders defined without abstractions is one of his main routes. And, god thanks, he is doing this. This is a movie about people who have nothing else to offer except love and solidarity in the very bottom. About people living in a society where there is a sharp line between interests such as daily stocks figures or supply of daily bread.

You can see and feel life throughout the film with the help of players. All three have their choices for life, which they can fight for. And their choices bring them together in a strange world. Absolutely a wonderful story about pure feelings and life.