A film that makes you think about love, affection, remorse and the if-onlys: The Disenchanted / Öznur Eren Kanarya

2018.06.17
İstanbul

The Disenchanted is a Selim Güneş film. We remember him from his first film, “White as Snow”, shot in 2010 and adapted from Sabahattin Ali’s story “Ayran”, which came back from international festivals with eight awards. He actually studied electrical engineering and business administration, but he is a true cinema enthusiast. Photography is another field in which he has been successful. In this area he has an album titled “İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti”, published in 2008, two solo and eight group photography exhibitions, and six photo shows.

The 2017 production The Disenchanted has also been brought to the big screen from Mehmet Eroğlu’s novel of the same name. I haven’t read the novel yet, but I want to read it as soon as possible so that I can trace the feelings the film stirred in me. Adaptations are dangerous in a way, because sometimes they may have drifted away from what the novel is trying to say. I liked the film. My intuition tells me I will like the novel too.

A short summary of the film:
In 2003, Kuzey (Mert Tanık), who in the late 1970s paid the price of being a student, prison time included, runs the Karayel motel in Eski Foça together with his close friend Sami (Buğra Koçtepe), whose crippled legs he indirectly caused. In the past, Kuzey had pulled Sami’s life back together after it fell apart when his wife left him. Now it is Sami who keeps an eye on his friend. Kuzey dreams of his novel The Disenchanted, which he can never manage to write (we sense it will never be written). He has a wealthy older brother who, he believes, wants to take over his life with that wealth. Kuzey has withdrawn into his cocoon. He is waiting for the return of the half-German, half-Turkish Şafak (Denise Ankel), who came in 1998 to scout locations for a documentary about Greek villages, and of Benek, the little dog they found together at that time, whom he promised Şafak he would look after but who vanished a year ago.

The film consists of four parts: Encounter, Love-Affection, Separation, Reunion

Unlike Kuzey, Şafak is someone who cares about being in the midst of life. She is about to go to Africa, and she is engaged. But she falls in love with Kuzey. Kuzey loves her too.

“I want a feeling even greater than happiness,” Şafak says one day.
Kuzey’s answer is: “I know what it is: love and pain.”
Şafak asks: “Isn’t pain inside love?”

Despite the remorse she feels, after each of their separations Şafak cannot bear the longing and comes back to the Karayel Motel. On her fifth return, Kuzey tells her they cannot have a future together and does not say “Stay” to her. Thinking Kuzey does not want her, Şafak leaves. Five years later we learn the truth from Kuzey’s conversations with Çiğdem:
Çiğdem: “I don’t think you were in love with her. If you had really been in love, you wouldn’t have let her go.”
Kuzey: “If I hadn’t loved her, I wouldn’t have let her go.”
Çiğdem: “There. That’s exactly what I meant. She was in love with you, while you loved her.”
Kuzey: “Yes.”

We see Şafak, who sets out at night, driving her car fast on the road to the sea. She disappears without a trace. Five years pass. Çiğdem (Bahar Yanılmaz), whom we later realise is the representative of the wealthy older brother, arrives at the Karayel Motel, which, its finances growing ever weaker, has come to the brink of closing. Although her arrival recalls Şafak’s, her interest does not move Kuzey. He is still waiting for Şafak to come back, or for her car to be found at the bottom of the sea by his friend the Dolphin Man (Hakan Emre Ünal). The other one he is waiting for is Benek, over whom he torments himself because he failed to look after him. Every now and then he thinks he hears him barking.

There is one last part of the sea that has not been searched. Could Şafak be there?

At Kuzey’s insistence, the Dolphin Man keeps diving to different depths of the sea looking for the remains of Şafak’s car, and one day he tells Kuzey he has seen the car very far down. Kuzey transfers half of the motel to his brother’s company in exchange for all his debts being written off, leaves a letter for Çiğdem and Sami, and sets out to sea, heading for the deep waters where the Dolphin Man saw Şafak’s car.

On one of the days they spent together, Şafak had asked Kuzey whether paradise was at the bottom of the sea, as if wishing it were so.

Hoping to be reunited with his beloved in the paradise at the bottom of the sea and to ask her forgiveness, Kuzey ends his life with his gun. When he points the gun at his head and pulls the trigger, the last sound he hears is Benek’s bark.

Is paradise really in the depths of the sea? Or is true paradise wherever the one we love is?

Go and see it, I say. Unfortunately, we live in a system where Turkish films that have something to say, something they want to tell, can stay in cinemas only for a short time and with few screenings.

Throughout the film, thanks to masterful camerawork, I watched the sunlight, its reflections and the sea as if they were extraordinary photographs.

When the film ended, I found myself thinking about the love and affection that go with its beautiful images, about conveying a feeling rightly and in time, about remorse and the if-onlys…

*****