Yazgi

I have recently finished the novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus and began searching for its film adaptations. I came across Luchino Visconti's 1967 adaptation with the same title in Italian. I was astonished by how accurately it depicts the novel. I couldn't find any single deviation from the book. On the other hand, this one presents a rewritten story based on The Stranger. It is an adaptation of the story to 2000s of Türkiye with many modifications.

While the intention is clearly to present an absurd hero, a few inconsistencies caught my attention. In the novel, Meursault kills the Arab in his second encounter and for almost no reason, however, in this film Musa appears to kill the other guy(s) to protect his friend. This doesn't suit well with the concept of absurdism. Another thing is that Meursault struggles with the idea of death in prison, and especially, with how to give up hope. In this one, those prison struggles are not depicted. At the end of 4 years, the prosecuter calls him and tells him a very long tiresome story about how his boss killed his family, blamed Musa and finally confessed his guilt. Musa is strangely being released although he had also killed some guys on the street. Overall, only the characteristic feature of being indifferent to the universe is depicted all through the movie but the novel gives more than that.

Acknowledging Albert Camus's "The Outsider" as its source-text, YAZGI (FATE) offers a bleak vision of contemporary Turkey. The film contains several of the stylistic devices associated with director Zeki Demirkubuz's earlier work: the extended use of fade-to-black shots, the complex shot-composition in which darkness at the left and right of the frame is broken up by shafts of light; and the extended close-up focusing on the characters' expressionless faces. Through such strategies he conjures up a world of unremitting hopelessness in which darkness and light act as metaphors for the characters' psychology. Their lives are mostly dark interspersed with occasional, if somewhat fleeting, shafts of hope.

Such optimistic moments are few and far between in a film that concentrates on Musa's (Serdar Orçin's) disillusion at a world that seems ever more indifferent to his state of mind. The film begins with his mother's death: unable to reconcile himself to such a shattering occurrence, he does not tell anyone about it until at least a day afterwards. But then perhaps he is right to do this: the office where he works is chock-full of glass partitions acting as a permanent barrier to communication. Musa's boss Naim (Demir Karahan) is wrapped up in his extra-marital affairs; his colleague Yavuz (Feridun Koç) shuns conversation in favor of his computer- screen; while secretary Sinem (Zeynep Tokuş) is another lost soul looking for an emotional port in a storm. In such an environment, it's hardly surprising that Musa should retreat into himself by refusing to reveal anything about his emotions.

Musa's emotional state is summed up through a series of potent visuals. He stands at the side of a busy road, watching cars and lorries whiz past him, suggesting detachment from life. His apartment-block is dull and dingy, with metal bars across the windows denoting mental as well as physical imprisonment. As he walks into the block, the sound of slamming doors suggest a reluctance on anyone's part to engage in conversation.

In the end Musa is tried for murder; as it turns out, this is something he did not commit. Nonetheless he serves a prison sentence for it until released on a free pardon. In a climactic sequence comprised of shot/reverse shot sequences, he debates with a lawyer the pros and cons of the prison sentence, revealing as he does so a continuing reluctance to engage with the world around him at an emotional and spiritual level. The deity means nothing to him; and hence he appears to have no morality. The film ends with a voice-over in which Musa discovers the true consequences of his detachment, that prove far more profound than he anticipated.

YAZGI is quite difficult to watch, with long continuous sequences in which director Demirkubuz's camera seldom seems to move as it focuses intently on the characters' expressions. Sometimes he uses the shot/reverse-shot structure, a directorial mode that normally suggests some kind of logical conversation, but in this film our expectations are consciously frustrated. This is an illogical world, and Musa knows it. Demirkubuz uses certain shot-structures to emphasize this fact.

Especially the last speech expanded my horizon. If you like psychological movies, you should watch this.

Musa, the antagonist of this oppressive existence, is portrayed as an outsider-enigmatic and largely incomprehensible to those around him. While the film initially emphasizes his eccentricity, it cleverly poses a deeper question: "Are the so-called 'normal' people truly as 'normal' as they seem?" The narrative invites the audience to scrutinize their own desires and choices, juxtaposing them against the stark and melancholic inner world of Musa. The cinematography beautifully complements the film's introspective tone, while the performances are compelling and layered with philosophical undertones. Undoubtedly, this is one of the finest literary adaptations in Turkish cinema.

This film is part of Demirkubuz' trilogy "Tales about Darkness'. Loosely based on Albert Camus' novel "The Stranger" it shows the life of a young man as a chain of decisions to be made. How should he react as he discovers the death of his mother? What should he do when a colleague shows her love for him? The hero though decides to do nothing. "I don't care", is his basic answer. "The world sucks", he once declares, his face void of expression.

Although it sometimes over-strains its metaphors (like the TV as modern substitute for human communication and harmonious family-life), this is the most ambiguous, and therefore most impressing work of Demirkubuz so far.