White as Snow / Orhan Ünser

2011.07.05
sadibey.com

A poet read his poem, and someone asked him, “What is this poem trying to say?” The poet read the poem again and said, “It is trying to say this.” Some films cannot be explained; in fact, films cannot be explained at all, because cinema is (also) a mode of expression. White as Snow is one of those films: only those who have watched it can talk about it, whether they like it or not, and I am one of those who liked it. But let me say from the start: when I saw the trailer, I thought, “All right, I’ve made up my mind to see this film,” yet I didn’t like the trailer; but then a trailer never “does a film justice” anyway.

Sabahattin Ali is one of the cornerstones of our short story, and a storyteller our filmmakers have seldom turned to. But this should not be a problem for either side. Has Selim Güneş adapted Ali’s story “Ayran” for the screen under the title White as Snow (has he!), or has he taken the story “Ayran” and shot a poem called White as Snow? I say “shot,” not “written.”

Poetry in cinema has been attempted in different countries, at different times, in different forms. Some attempts succeeded and some didn’t… (poetic realism…) but I am not going to debate poetry in cinema. That is another matter. Güneş has done something that, as far as I know and have been able to see, has never been tried in our cinema: he has written a poem in cinema through the camera, editing included, of course.

The place where the minibuses pass, reached from his home by wading through the snow; a child carrying ayran “on a winter day – in the cold, surely”; the different people at this minibus stop; a woman waiting for the child at the windows; flashbacks; a person imprisoned / trapped; a newly appointed civil servant… snow, trees… something happened, or didn’t, (things happen) and a white horse running, running, running through the snow… (but a stained white…) In one scene of Fellini’s Amarcord a cow (it was a cow, wasn’t it?) emerged from the fog; I don’t know how many seconds it lasted, but everyone who watched noticed the cow and tried to work out why it was there… I wasn’t there, but I heard that Güneş was asked about “the reason for the horse” (really, does there have to be a reason?)… As the saying goes (almost a literary theory!), “if a gun is mentioned in a story, it must go off by the end.” I have never accepted this condition. Accepting in cinema this theory put forward for literature would, past a certain point, make films impossible to untangle. The white horse will keep running, in a vicious circle, and the child among the characters, and we (the audience), will watch it. The woman looking for the child will helplessly shout his name… In poems, too, there are times when a line (verse) from far above is repeated, sometimes several times. Snow-covered mountains, clouds, roads covered with trodden and untrodden snow, destinations that cannot be reached, letters that never arrive (never brought / never handed over), strangers who want back the money he couldn’t change…

To me, White as Snow is – I repeat – a poem shot / written as cinema

I must have read “Ayran” years ago; I wanted to read it again, and I still do, but that has nothing to do with White as Snow. I have called White as Snow (the film) a poem, but I will (never) attempt to turn this film into poetry, to write it as a poem… Years ago, when Yavuz Turgul was about to shoot his first film after his screenplays, he filmed the poem Fahriye Abla, which he had also written as a screenplay, but the film Fahriye Abla never became a poem; White as Snow, however, is to me – I repeat – a poem shot / written as cinema, independently of “Ayran”.

The danger awaiting Güneş is the second film he will make. We all have the right to expect a good film from him, but let none of us expect another White as Snow.

*****

*** https://www.sadibey.com/2011/06/28/kar-beyaz-2/#.UzbF_a2Sxxs