Innocence

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.

Zeki Demirkubuz's sophomore feature, Innocence represents a marked stylistic departure from the fragmentation and narrative asymmetry of Block-C and converges towards what would prove to be more quintessential recurring elements within his body of work: long takes, painstaking observation of temps mart, stationary camera framing, the inclusion of a hyper-extended dialogue "ellipses" (or in the case of The Third Page, a monologue) that approaches abstraction, the running television as a surrogate for self-imposed isolation, and a temporal ambiguity that projects an epic scope to intrinsically intimate, chamber dramas. Opening to the shot of a recently paroled prisoner, Yusuf (Güven Kiraç), pleading his case before the warden to remain in jail despite having served out his sentence for murder and attempted murder, arguing that he has lost touch with his sole remaining family (the married sister whom he attempted to kill along with her lover, apparently on behalf of his abusive, but weak willed brother-in-law) and does not have the appropriate support system to survive in the outside world without resorting to crime once again, as the official's door repeatedly springs open for no apparent reason, the seeming randomness of the broken door (a recurring image in his films) becomes a metaphor for the ambiguity of his future. A strange and fateful encounter with a couple forcibly removed from the bus reinforces this sense of destiny. Arriving at a rundown boarding house in a rural town to rest for the evening, he comes to the aid of a little girl stricken with fever after her parents fail to turn up for the evening to claim her. Returning the next morning to the boarding house after their mysterious disappearance, the parents turn out to be the detained couple from the bus, a genial, but mercurial drifter named Bekir (Haluk Bilginer) and the elusive object of his affection, a wanton lounge singer, Ugur (Derya Alabora) (perhaps a wink to Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel), who has been travelling across the country for twenty years (with Bekir ingratiating himself into her company) to be near her imprisoned first, "true" love. With little hope for reconciliation with his embittered and suffering sister, Yusuf returns for an indefinite stay at the boarding house and embarks on a friendship with the volatile couple. However, as Bekir and Ugur's relationship continues to be strained by the cumulative toll of their corrosive dysfunction, Yusuf, too, becomes drawn into their seductive, dark world of mutual self-destruction. Evoking the emotional intensity of an Ingmar Bergman chamber film and infused with the idiosyncratic combination of understated humour and soap operatic melodrama (not unlike the television programs that the lodgers watch each evening at the lounge), Innocence is an elegant, remarkably complex, and painstakingly rendered study of destructive obsessions and codependency. But beyond the psychological addiction that defines Bekir and Ugur's interminable journey to nowhere, Demirkubuz's framing of their relationship through the perspective of innocents, initially, through Ugur's deaf mute child, then subsequently, through the well-intentioned (and all too accommodating) Yusuf, Demirkubuz presents an intriguing portrait, not only of a pliable personality, but also the hypocrisy inherent in abusive relationships, where cruelty is rationalised by a sense of helpless, self-entitled victimisation.

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.

Demirkubuz seems like being aware of the place of gates in life. We all open and close many doors throughout our lives. 'Masumiyet' begins with an appearance of the manager's gate and we see Guven Kirac who offers a satisfactory performance. And 'Kader' is closed with a half-open door where Bekir grasps that 'this is his destiny'. It is impossible for Bekir to close the door opened by Ugur on the day at the carpet store.

The audience may capture many details based on 'gates'. Now I want to talk about the spectacular preaching of Ugur with which she takes our breath for a while. At the motel room, Ugur warns Yusuf about the destiny waiting for him. But as Bekir does, Yusuf ignores this warning because he is already taken over by love.

See this movie, then 'Kader' (or the reverse if you like a chronological telling).

All actors and acrtress are brillant. All scenes is so realistic. The scene planning and shooting angles show the emotion and stability very well. The film is both very static and progresses in a way that events can happen at any moment. The search adventure of the lead character with Disabled Girl could have been kept a little longer, but other than that, it is a Turkish masterpiece in every detail. You should definitely watch the same director's 'Destiny' movie right after this. I think it is the most impressive movie of the director who handles the sociology of the period very well and blends it with his art.