Gizli Yüz

I just watched this movie at the 2003 Toronto FIlm Festival and I must say I was deeply unsatisfied. It's not that I can't enjoy a good Art Film, but I found that this movie was open to interpretation that it was lacking in actual substance. The initial 30 minutes become so intriguing and are beautifully constructed, but then it seems to run aimlessly for the remainder. I had made conclusions in my head as to what happened. At the end of the screening Ömer Kavur came out and answered questions from the audience, he really didn't have much to say. With every question he seemed to respond with "That had no particular meaning" or "that is your own interpretation, it's always open to interpretation." When finally asked as to what HIS interpretation of the film was, all he said was that it was "the personal pursuit of happiness." which I must say, doesn't take 2 hours to show.

Omer Kavur's film, Gizli Yuz (The Hidden Face), is based upon the scenario of Orhan Pamuk. The film tells, in fact, the concept of time, and the sub-concepts of it. The human, love, the unreachable, within time. Orhan Pamuk is known about his keen observations and obsessions about the very contradiction between the East and West. The Eastern and Western civilisations were always different in the perception of time, individual, god and related matters. nevertheless, both the scenario and the film are too vague about what they want to tell. The pictures are of inferior quality, too touristic, orientalist, to say, and the words -not dialogues, actually, for they don't develop in the sense of dialogues- are harmingly artistical (!) What saves this film being a kitsch is the good acting of Rutkay Aziz and Zuhal Olcay, two prominent theatre players of Turkey.

The Secret Face (aka Gizli Yüz) is probably the best film of the Turkish auteur Ömer Kavur, and without doubt, one of the best and the most unique films ever made in Turkey. It won about 20 prizes for the best film, director, scenario, actor, etc... branches in about 7 different festivals it was shown, which include (besides Turkish festivals, in which it took nearly all the important prizes) Montreal (in which it won the best film prize), Bastia and Fribourg film festivals. So, no matter what the average film audiences, whose minds are programmed only to watch trendy and cliche Hollywood movies or the (more) trendy films by Sinan Cetin and likes, say or write about this film, its quality is already confirmed by the respected European movie critics and the audiences who're into the more "deeper" kind of moviemaking.

The Secret face combines the screenwriting talents of the highly respected Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and the unique (but at some points, perhaps Antonioni-inluenced) film making talents of the Turkish auteur director Ömer Kavur. It is loosely based on one of the short stories included in Pamuk's literary obscure masterpiece "The Black Book", and the main themes of that book is still present here, which are the search for the inner truth, alienation and the questioning for the meaning of time. The director takes his lead character, the photographer, from his cold and lonely city life (and perhaps the reality), to an inner journey to the provinces of barren lands of his heart, where he will seek for the woman he fells in love with, and therefore to a search for his inner essence, his true self. The atmosphere of this masterpiece takes its audience to a world out of time and space: Shots of leafless trees throughout the movie and the lead character's voyage through dilapidated and maybe abandoned, forgotten places and buildings alienates its viewers from the reality they're present in, and takes them to a journey to their inner selves as well, along with the photographer. Even the movie's starting place, Istanbul looks different, perhaps wretched and colder. The Director uses his camera NOT to take the viewer to a touristic trip to anatolian villages, but to CREATE A WORLD, which looks hauntingly familiar but in a nearly dream-like sense of reality. So, calling this film's pictures "touristic" (!) is nothing but a complete nonesense! If you are calling it this way then you don't have THE SENSUAL POTENTIAL required to get into this movie, which the people who respected this film in everyway all over the world have!

Yes, the movie is obscure, and even surrealistic, but IT IS INTENDED TO BE already. This is a mystical movie and it is REQUIRED to be this way, it needs YOU to use your imagination, and tries to stimulate your subconscious, because it needs to take you to a journey into yourself! It of course doesn't give any direct answers, because it wants you to have your own experience with the film. The photographer's search is your search, too, so you must find your own answers, you don't need the answers that the film's makers would give you! So, if you are too lazy or unwilling to watch this kind of ART MOVIE, then simply DON'T watch this film and try one of the other trendy Hollywood movies which you don't need to use your mind! In this movie, you are required not only to use your mind: You must have both the HEART and BRAIN. If you don't have these two, or you want to watch an easy & trendy movie, then try Sinan Çetin's "Propaganda" or "Komsersekspir", which will give a total NOTHING to you but amuse you by their cast of famous singers, showmen, journalists, football players, famous whore-models and all the other irrevelant but famous people, and by making jokes that only kids can laugh. If you are into this, then watch these kind of things and don't watch Ömer Kavur, and if you do, keep your mouth shut and don't talk about his films because when you talk you'll just get yourself into a pitiful position!

To summarize it, The Secret Face is a unique masterpiece and watch this movie if you are into original film making and the films of directors like Antonioni, Visconti, and even Tarkovsky (when all the film's existentialist nature is considered). If it is an easy-watching-and-easy-forgetting type of movie you are looking for then try something else.

If you watch and like this movie, also try Ömer Kavur's two other masterpieces `The Motherland Hotel (Anayurt Oteli)' and `The Journey On The Hour Hand (Akrebin Yolculugu)'. If you look for some other quality Turkish films too, also try the ones by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Zeki Demirkubuz, Yavuz Turgul etc.

He goes into cafés, bars and the like, in search of the "secret face" -- someone the woman feels will be able to divulge some sort of secret, or possesses some sort of answer she needs. After a considerable amount of time, she finds the man with the "secret face" - a clock maker. By this time, the young man has fallen in love with the woman, who has disappeared with the clock maker. Obsessed, or haunted, by her and by clocks, he travels the country looking for them. I saw this at the Seattle Film Festival in 1991 or 1992, I think -- There were about 15 people at the screening, sad to say. I feel some need to comment here, that though my memory of it is spotty at this time, there are parts that STILL resonate within me. I remember walking out of the theater and wandering down the street, not sure if I wanted a drink, a cup of coffee, to be alone or... or... Just utterly captivated by it -- it so took me into it and dropped me off somewhere else; for the first time in YEARS I had the feeling that I had entered some other world and the buildings and objects on the street seemed foreign / alien to me; that odd, disoriented feeling I had first going to movies as a kid. I went to a park and sat on a bench near some water for about half an hour afterwards. To this day, its recollection is akin, if anything, to a scent one hasn't smelled in quite awhile, the way it evokes something unsayable. The fact that I saw it over a dozen years ago and still find something compelling about it, still think of it as one of the five greatest movies I've ever seen, says a thing or two.

Gizli Yuez or The Secret Face is a strange and beautiful film that approaches the unconscious mind through the process of Middle Eastern mysticism. The movie's central character is a young Turkish man who decides to leave his home and move to Istanbul. While in Istanbul he forms a friendship and then falls in love with a mysterious woman who suddenly disappears. He embarks on frantic search for the woman and in the process is lead on a metaphorical journey that leads into his own unconscious mind.