As a Debut Movie, White as Snow Deserves Our Respect / Ege Görgün (Landlord)

2011.05.28
tersninja.com

So That the Sabahattin Alis Are Not Forgotten

Sabahattin Ali has not been forgotten. Just like all the writers and poets who were executed by nameless killers because their ideas generally stood against the state policies and tendencies of their time. These were states that flirted with femmes fatales such as nationalism and fascism. In the eyes of those who supported that kind of affair, Sabahattin Ali too was a “bad guy”, a threat. In the end he was a “dirty commie”. In 1948, during an attempt to flee from Turkey to Bulgaria, he was shot and killed. His killer later confessed to this murder. The killer was the person who was supposed to help Sabahattin Ali cross the Bulgarian border safely. Sabahattin Ali was killed by the man he trusted, the man to whom he had entrusted his life. The killer was sentenced to four years in prison. A sentence he would never serve. A few weeks later he benefited from a general amnesty and was released. Much later it emerged that the killer was a National Intelligence officer. Another rumour was that he was not the real killer and had only taken the crime upon himself.

Sabahattin Ali’s body was found near the Bulgarian border on 2 April 1948. There was an ironic side to the fact that, 63 years later, we were watching a film adapted from one of his stories at the Sofia Film Festival. Did this not mean that Sabahattin Ali had in fact crossed the border safe and sound, and that those who wanted to stop him and silence his voice had failed?

White as Snow (Kar Beyaz) is freely adapted from Sabahattin Ali’s story Ayran. Ayran is a drink made only of yoghurt, water and salt. Simple but delicious, just like the film itself.

When the story in question is only five or six book pages long, as Ayran is, a free adaptation is a necessity. But despite the new additions made to the story, the new characters, and the changes of place and time, it has to be said that White as Snow is a successful adaptation. The reason is that it has managed to transfer the essence of the story onto celluloid and to reflect the right feeling on the screen.

In Ayran the story takes place in the 1940s. In White as Snow, although it is not very explicit, we move to the 1970s, to the period of the military coup that took place in Turkey for the second time. The setting is the mountainous parts of the Northern Black Sea. The story of a twelve-year-old boy, Hasan, is told. Every day he has to cover the kilometres between his home and the main road in order to sell ayran. What is more, the minibus that carries the passengers he dreams of selling ayran to passes along this road only twice a day. After his father went to prison the family fell into poverty, and looking after his two younger siblings, while his mother, who works in the town, is away from home, has also become a responsibility he has to carry on his small shoulders.

Although Hasan is the focus of the film, the film also contains other parallel stories. The father, the mother, an old man from another village, a young engineer from the big city who is unhappy because he was posted to this rural region, and so on…

Director Selim Güneş has a 20-year background in photography. The approach that this expertise gives rise to can be seen in the film as well. He prefers to tell his story through cinematography rather than through words. He is aware that cinema and photography are similar storytelling tools, and that trying to bring them together in a film can sometimes produce bad results. Güneş has done his best to stay in the border zone. It can be said that he has to some extent overcome the stillness of photography. Yes, compared with mainstream films, White as Snow is still a slow film and may struggle to sell tickets at the box office. But which festival film does not go through this? This is one of the disadvantages of making art-house cinema. It is also a signpost that says the following to the audience: the film you are watching is not a product of consumer culture and savage capitalism.

Selim Güneş shot one of the shots in the film inspired by a photograph by Josef Koudelka, the Czech photographer born in 1938. In this scene we witness the gendarmes taking the father away from the wedding house. A second reference is also made to Michelangelo’s painting “The Creation”.

Despite some moments that lack a cinematic feeling (the ending, for example), White as Snow, as a first film, definitely deserves our respect. Not only for its cinematography, but for its approach as well… It is an approach that brings Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Semih Kaplanoğlu to mind. It can be said that White as Snow is in the same lane as the films of these directors. But if a comparison is needed, it can be said that Güneş prefers a more conventional and traditional storyline. (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Üç Maymun and Kaplanoğlu’s Bal are the exceptions in this comparison.)

One should not finish without adding that the music used in the film is extraordinary. You can even watch the film a second time just to listen to its music. The talented musician Mircan has worked wonders with folk songs whose roots extend to the north-east of Turkey and to Georgia. At the 47th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in 2010, the Best Music Award went to White as Snow.

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