Can’t love and revolution go together? / Uğur Vardan

2018.06.16
hurriyet.com.tr

Revolution was such a sacred goal that, on the road leading to it, love was perhaps a waste of time, an unnecessary kind of human weakness, a confusing distraction. That is why revolutionaries always chose revolution over love. Perhaps because they could not reach the ultimate goal… Who knows, maybe loving, being in love, was not such a lofty thing after all.

Themes of this kind were abundant in the post-’80 films that dealt with a reckoning with the past. There was certainly a recipe on the table, but sadly there were no films able to carry it off cinematically. ‘The Disenchanted’, one of the week’s new releases, is the screen adaptation of Mehmet Eroğlu’s 2005 novel. Directed by Selim Güneş, the film resembles those post-’80 productions, which we briefly tried to describe at the start, that did not manage to convey their concerns very well. The hero of the story, Kuzey, runs a small motel in a charming Aegean town together with his old comrade Sami. One day a young woman named Şafak, who comes to the motel to do research in the Greek villages nearby, fills Kuzey with a joy of living. This former revolutionary, who had lost his hopes in life, has found something to hold on to, as it were. But he cannot manage to love; he is crushed under the attention the other person shows him, cannot act as bravely as the young woman, cannot take responsibility. Reacting to this, Şafak jumps into her car and…

‘The Disenchanted’ struggles to convey cinematically a story that on paper is worth listening to, and unfortunately it looks dated. The dialogue is very bookish, and the characters seem very listless (admittedly Kuzey has that kind of personality, but it seems he could have been made more convincing). I think an old critics’ phrase sums up the matter: ‘A well-intentioned effort’… (2 / 5)

*****

*** http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/ugur-vardan/butun-kizlar-toplandik-40868420