Kor

Cinematography beautiful, good acting, characters realistic. But there are some shortcomings. I can't exactly tell. I think the audience is not affected enough. Audience thinking about movie.

Kor utilizes the traditional love triangle that is often used in soap operas and melodramas, to twist it or dress it if you like with an existentialist cloak.The major themes are moral ambiguity, alienation and lack of communication in the context of an anonymous and indifferent Cityscape.Emine and Ziya are not sure about the terms of their relationship, their perspectives seem to change due to the moral rules of society.Values like family and subordination of female to male are voiced but not followed.Cemal himself shares the same moral ambiguity, although his pride is hurt and beats his wife, he don't ask for a divorce and continues to work in the workshop of the fornicator Ziya.Dialogues between the three protagonists are sparse and many times inconclusive high lightened sometimes by lengthy pauses of silence.Demirkubuz frames his characters in enclosed spaces with oblique camera angles to emphasize their entrapment that is physical and psychological.Although the first part of the film is mostly focused to Emine who is divided as a love object and as a loyal spouse, slowly the film shifts to Cemal's predicament.Again we don't witness some clear action, he becomes distant and self absorbed working overtimes being unable to express his emotions with words.Fate seems to resolve the conflict with the accident of Niyaz, but there is no resolution between the two spouses and their distance is unabridged.Someone can to think that Demirkubuz is distrustful of language as a vehicle of communication, his subjects are trapped and unable to change the course of events. History seems to be a force that crushes them with no explanation.This is a typical Existentialist view of the human condition and Demirkubuz apply it in his film vocabulary with static shots in tight spaces, frames that separate the characters, blurry Cityscapes etc.Demirkubuz seems to be a person with few ideas but he refined them through the course of time in his filmography and has developed a film language that is distinctively his own.That is not a small achievement and he deserves praise and respect, he brings a literary sensibility in his films that maybe are sometimes a bit pedantic but always thought provoking.

The film is about the uncanny and veiled behaviors of the characters who are burning inside with what they cannot ask, say, hide, do and did not do. It is full of doubt, hesitation and possibilities. It's always a matter of being in-between, pride and passion, leaving and staying, saying/asking or keeping quiet.

ZD is in the classification of human behavioral scientist directors, meaning that's what he's worried about in his movies. That's why he senses human behaviours pretty well. The frame is another sucessful feature, most of the scenes are showed either through reflections or from behind the door (almost within the frame). In this sense, we can say that it has an expressive and impressive style. The weak point of the film is that it is unnecessarily long and the director's filmography unfortunately loses its originality gradually, even in itself, it falls into repetitions and does not leave room for the audience to breathe.

Still, he is a worthy director. Hoping to see his better movies.