Nietzsche's Umbrella

How would you summarise the film?

In the film, I try to show the viewer the blurred lines between individuality, conscience and social responsibility, while telling the story of translator Burak's search for a more peaceful life. When designing the characters and the plot, my goal was always the same - to set up ethical dilemmas and give the characters freedom of choice.

Can you explain the dramatic need, point of view, attitude of the main character Burak and the character change in the film in general?

Dramatic necessity - Burak's conscious desire is to leave Istanbul in order to get out of the stuck life he lives in and to reach a more peaceful life. From the first scenes Burak's cheerful recklessness and callousness, trying not to care about anything, do not seem convincing to the viewer. As the scenes progress, it is seen that under the mask of trying not to take life or himself too seriously, there is an effort to be accepted. As the events progress, Burak's basic contradiction is revealed. On the one hand, he desires a peaceful and worry-free life. On the other hand, he mercilessly criticises this search for peace 'The search for a peaceful and worry-free life is the incapacity of mediocre and tired Nietzsche translators who cannot create a satisfying meaning in their lives!' Burak's main dramatic need is parallel to Nietzsche's philosophy. Not Peace and happiness, to be able to create a satisying meaning! It is only towards the middle of the film that the viewer can grasp this motivation in the depths of Burak's nihilistic personality.

Point of view - 'If the world were light, there would be no art,' writes Albert Camus in a very clear style. It is no coincidence that Burak, who wrote a doctoral thesis on Nietzsche and translated books about Nietzsche, was a nihilist with a dark personality. This dark personality of Burak has two important characteristics. The passive side of his personality - the person who cannot get out of the emptiness created by being detached from society, who no longer wants or does anything. In other words, a tired person. The active side of his personality - the person who rejects everything but tries to find his own value judgements instead of the things he rejects... The struggle between these two points of view is felt throughout the film.

Attitude - Ballerina Twyla Tharp, who thinks that art is an escape, writes: 'Art is the only way to escape from home without leaving home.' Throughout the film, Burak's general attitude towards life is to avoid conflicts as much as possible, to retreat into his own shell instead of struggling with problems, and to reduce the tensions he experiences by dealing with music. For Burak, music, which makes life more bearable, has a healing effect. This general attitude of Burak is constantly criticised throughout the film. Selin interprets Burak's passivity and his effort to stay away from negative energy and stress as a deficiency in their marriage - 'We divorced because of your loser behaviour!' Serkan, on the other hand, emphasises at the end of the second act that Burak cannot escape from his responsibilities forever - 'Even if you run away, even if you deny it, we started this business together!"

Change - Burak's mask of 'cheerful recklessness' in the introduction part of the film turns into an 'active nihilist' struggling to create meaning in his life from the second part onwards. After the tragic events, at the end of the second act Burak turns into a character who traces the lost time and surrenders to a melancholic inertia. The third and the final part is a reflection of Burak's endeavour to find his inner peace again. To put it in a sentence inspired by Nietzsche, 'Amor Fati! If you don't regret, if you don't curse your past, you will wander in the depths of your memory, you will smile, you will live you again and again, as if it is engraved in your mind like a childhood memory that never fades...'

What is the key idea and main message of the film?

It is not easy to escape from your past and your responsibilities. The film closes at the end of the third act with this idea - no matter how hard you try, it is useless! Your past keeps following you and at some point you have to face your past, your worst enemy. A pagan maxim says 'You must co-operate with your enemy before it is too late'. At the end of the film, Burak's effort to reconcile with himself and his past is depicted.

What can you say about the general atmosphere?

I designed the physical atmosphere of the film with Orhan Pamuk's novel The Museum of Innocence in mind. An old TV repair shop, Kasparov vs Deep Blue, Pentium 3 processors, a dusty doctoral thesis, an old bookshop, decaying rowboats... All these places and objects tell the metaphor of 'tracing lost time'.

In the film, there is a very long indicative dialogue scene in scene 25. Just like the long sequence before the fire in Cinema Paradiso, the viewer feels that something different will start to happen in the film after this long transition dialogue. The genre of the story, which had been progressing in the form of an intellectual introspection until this scene, changes and shifts to the genre of a detective story, where the events begin to flow rapidly. At the end of the third act, the story returns to the form of intellectual introspection and both genres are merged in the surprise ending at the end of the film.

The film starts with an external voice narration and ends with an external voice narration in the last scene. Many of Burak's lines in the film are inspired by Nietzsche himself. Burak both expresses his own feelings and criticises himself through Nietzsche's thoughts. In Nietzsche's philosophy, vicious circle and creating/not creating meaning are of key importance. Burak's mental development is shaped by these two concepts.

A separate parenthesis should be opened for the music, which is woven into the fabric of the film in many scenes. The Ney instrument is one of the common points that connect Burak and his uncle Neyzen Arif Baba. The most important common denominator between Burak - Serkan - Altug is the fact that they make music together in mountain camps and their desire to turn their compositions into an album. The film opens with the music made in the cave and an external voice narrator, and in the last scene, it is again connected through music and external voice.