White as Snow - Film Adaptations of Sabahattin Ali’s Works / Hatice Bildirici

Hece monthly literary magazine, January 2018, Issue 253

Sabahattin Ali’s story “Ayran” was adapted for the screen in 2010 by photographer Selim Güneş under the title White as Snow. We can say that White as Snow, the director’s only film, holds a special place among the Sabahattin Ali adaptations.

In the film, 12-year-old Hasan’s father, Halil the blacksmith, is sent to prison during the 1980 coup. To support the family, his mother starts working as a carer in the town. Hasan is left to look after his two younger siblings. He helps provide for the household by filling a jug with the ayran he has made and selling it to the passengers of passing minibuses. On a cold winter day, he once again leaves the village to sell ayran and comes to the tea house, two hours away on foot, where the minibuses stop. He waits in the cold until evening. But he cannot sell a single drop of ayran. When he sets off back to the village, the cold will take him captive.

In the story, events are told from Hasan’s point of view. The events unfolding around him are not set within a chain of cause and effect. Yet everything Hasan does and everything that happens to him is tied to a fundamental reason. Unlike in the film, in the story Hasan knows nothing about his father or his relatives. Also, unlike in the film, Hasan tries to sell the ayran at a train station. Both the story and the film tell of a single day. That day is the last day of Hasan’s brief life.

White as Snow, which can also be watched as a poem of helplessness, can be regarded as poetic cinema. The slowly drifting clouds and the way the snow lies on the ground as if hiding something give the feeling that something is awaited. The creaking doors of wooden houses, scenes of long cigarettes smoked while gazing into the distance, the silent falling of snow, people who speak little and think much: these convey the repetitive days of small-town tedium that grow neither longer nor shorter. They follow one another like the lines of a poem. Indeed, the film ends with this poem appearing on the screen:

You are afraid of the dark
I understand, my baby
But I promise you a bright dream
Close your eyes and give yourself up to luminous dreams
The birds will sing you a lullaby
Sleep, my baby, sleep, my baby
Don’t be afraid, your mother will be waiting for you

In a film built on little dialogue, the images carry a great deal of meaning. Metaphors such as the “yellow balloon” and the “wounded grey horse” that suddenly appears give the subject depth. Sabahattin Ali’s story, adorned with rich descriptions, seems to have taken the form of a painting in the film. Shot in a mountain village in the Şavşat district of Artvin, the film brings the region’s harsh natural conditions to the screen in a poetic way. It is impossible not to feel a parallel between these harsh conditions and Hasan’s struggle for life.

The film does not tell every detail of the events; while conveying Hasan’s sad story, it asks the audience to fill in the gaps. There are leaps in time and flashbacks. We gradually come to understand the relationships, as if solving a riddle. In this respect, as in many others, the influence of the American director Terrence Malick can be seen in the film. Selim Güneş, too, mentions in his interviews that this director is among his favourites.

The film’s music won the Best Film Music Award at the 47th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. Indeed, although the music comes in only rarely, it carries a weight that expresses the harsh conditions of nature and of Hasan.

It would be no exaggeration to say that this film comes close to Sabahattin Ali’s skill in portraying the people of Anatolia.

When we watch the Sabahattin Ali adaptations one after another, we also see the journey of Turkish cinema, and even what befell it along the way. We see that these adaptations, made from one novel and eight stories between 1967 and 2010, show a development, and that the quality of these works, which are coming ever closer to receiving the attention they deserve, has risen. Comparing Azap Yolları, made in 1967 from three of Sabahattin Ali’s stories, with White as Snow, made in 2010, one sees that significant ground has been covered not only in the path our cinema has taken but also in the understanding of Sabahattin Ali.

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