Film: White as Snow / Andarilho

2012.12.01
estou-sem.blogspot / Brasil

Film: White as Snow

Despite being short (it runs under 80 minutes), the Turkish film White as Snow (Kar Beyaz in the original) feels longer. This effect is created not only by its slow, intimate pace but also by the size of its characters’ dramas.

White as Snow introduces us to the young boy Hasan (Hakan Korkmaz), who lives in a small village in rural Turkey. After his father is arrested (for reasons that are never fully explained), Hasan’s mother (Sinem İslamoğlu) has to leave home to work in another village, looking after an old lady, leaving Hasan in charge of the house and of his two younger siblings. To earn some money, Hasan walks through the mountains and forests to a roadside rest stop, where he tries to sell ayran (a yogurt-based drink) to the travellers who stop there.

The whole film takes place on a single, fateful winter day, in a landscape dominated by the white of the snow, and it is through flashbacks that we are introduced to the story. Besides Hasan’s family drama, we are also introduced to the dramas of other characters, such as the young man (Ziver Armağan Açıl) who works as a receptionist at the rest stop (and who is waiting for a love letter), the anonymous passenger (Kaya Akkaya) who, uneasy, has to go to a distant village to do a job, or the old Ruhan Odabaş, who, like Hasan, travels long distances to the rest stop to try to sell some product.

White as Snow, adapted from a novel by Sabahattin Ali and written and directed by Selim Güneş, has a slow, intimate pace, in which wide shots emphasise nature and its merciless indifference to human beings. In these shots, where the colour white reigns over the deep layers of snow, tiny, solitary human figures are shown covering the distances, which adds extra weight to the drama, especially Hasan’s: carrying the jug of ayran, he seems to carry a greater weight than he should have to bear, both metaphorically and literally.

White as Snow has excellent performances, and the young Korkmaz stands out as Hasan, who comes across at once as a child forced to grow up by circumstances (the scene of the comic book lost in the current is the symbolic synthesis of all this: innocence slipping away, while the boy does not cry over the loss but simply accepts his fate) and as one who, deep inside, still keeps his immaturity (such as his insistence on staying at the rest stop trying to sell at least one glass of the yogurt drink, even as night and its dangers draw near).

Despite a few clichés (such as the insistence on signalling the imminent danger in the form of wolves’ howls, the red of blood contrasting with the white of the snow on an attacked horse, or some characters’ premonitions of the approaching drama), the film proves quite effective at moving us, making us root for the characters even though we know the chances of a happy ending are nil (something that can be inferred from both the synopsis and the trailer).

White as Snow may not be a technically perfect film (although the cinematography is good, especially given the adverse conditions in which it was shot), but it is an interesting drama that also has the advantage of showing (to us Westerners) that, even on the other side of the world, some dramas are universal. The film does not tie up all its loose ends; in fact it leaves several of them hanging (such as why Hasan’s father is in prison, or why the worker is so reluctant to go to that godforsaken place to work), but these loose ends are not too bothersome (after all, real life is full of loose ends).

In short, White as Snow is a good drama. It is also a good opportunity to get to know a cinema different from the one we are used to, by watching a film from Turkey. It is this element of curiosity that counterbalances all the sadness of the film’s characters.

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