Masumiyet

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.

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).

Demirkubuz sets out to explore the marginalized, the downtrodden and the hapless as he ends up provoking the audience to explore their own realities, to see if their grounding in existence holds up to such a merciless scrutiny. Devoid of all roots and conformities, his characters are free to roam the earth in search of peace and happiness in any way they can and perhaps in the only way they know how, in many instances in spite of themselves. That's a misfortune (or a fortune) depending on which side of the coin you prefer to look at. One thing is certain though, this coin looks shiny side up and once you pick it up off the dirty street, it will be too late to ignore the muddy flip side.

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.

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.