White as Snow – Selim Güneş / Gürkan Kılıçaslan

2014.02.02
gurkankilicaslan.com

“You are afraid of the dark
I understand, my baby
But I promise you a bright dream
Close your eyes and let yourself drift into dreams full of light
The birds will sing you a lullaby
Sleep, my baby, sleep, my baby
Don’t be afraid, your mother will be waiting for you”

The story of a boy who lives in a poor village in Artvin and sells ayran to the passengers of vehicles passing along the road.

A film adapted and directed by Selim Güneş from Sabahattin Ali’s 1938 story “Ayran”. Güneş’s first and, for now, last film is an impressive work of the kind they call “magical realism”. Güneş, who “enriches” and “expands” Ali’s story with the new characters he adds, deserves praise for the images he captures in the locations he chose for the story, for the plain and natural performances he draws from his actors, for his success in weaving a very accomplished score into his story, and for managing to make his characters universal without losing their local roots, something that many masters of our cinema have failed to achieve or have not cared about.

Sabahattin Ali’s story, which says more than enough of what could be said under the conditions of the 1930s and conveys in a few pages, in striking language, how the order pushes the poor towards annihilation, has found its cinematic counterpart in this film without losing the impact it has in the book. If you both admire the film and feel the urge to read – perhaps once again – the story that served as its source, then it is clear that Güneş has come out of the touchy matter of the relationship between literature and cinema unscathed. Watching the visual counterpart of the story, in other words its visual interpretation, or more accurately the image inspired by the writing, it must first of all be said that Güneş, almost without faltering, brings us a film one cannot remain indifferent to. There are two points where he falters: one of them loses its importance as the story progresses, and the other is a choice that can be explained by the artist’s background in photography and does not overshadow the film’s success. The first is that the film moves forward in a somewhat scattered way at the beginning; it is as if the director at first had some trouble bringing together the characters he added to the story. Yet Güneş quickly overcomes this initial problem, and as the characters, the situation they are in and the relationships between them settle, you warm to the film – at a speed that may even surprise the viewer. Especially in the images he draws out of nature and brings before us, the director at times seems to have fallen under the spell of visual beauty himself, but fortunately these moments are not numerous enough to cause any real discomfort.

One of the most fundamental achievements of the screenplay, which moves a story set in the 1930s to just before or just after 12 September 1980, is that, while barely disturbing the original plot, it weaves into the story in a very natural way characters many of whom are mentioned in the book in only a few words, and some of whom do not appear in the book at all. For example, the father, who in the story is only mentioned as absent and with no reason given, appears before us concretely in the film, and the reason he is away from home is conveyed to the audience, yet you do not feel anything awkward or forced. Similarly, the stationmaster of the train station in the story becomes here a young man working at a makeshift rest stop where passing vehicles pull over, and Güneş manages to make this new character’s story interesting in its own right. Characters such as the old man who carries a regret he cannot shake off because of the work he did, or the engineer from İstanbul who is unhappy at having ended up in this wild place, also carry much more here than their roles in the book, and screenwriter/director Güneş has succeeded in these changes, or rather these additions, as well.

The film keeps its characters away from unnecessary dialogue and, by turning the magnificent snow-covered nature of Artvin almost into a character, tells what it has to say through its visuals. In doing so, it “enchants” its audience with striking images, some of which may seem familiar, but all of which are used successfully as a means of expressing a “concern”. The Zagor comic that falls from the boy’s hand and is carried away by the waters of the stream; the “Dev-Genç” graffiti on a rock that suddenly appears before us and, although it has been painted over in white, still clearly shows itself; or the boy who quickly waves a small glowing piece of wood back and forth and gazes at the fiery image it forms as if he were looking at a small miracle… all these are just a few examples of the visual power of Güneş and his film. In this film with little dialogue, the director also makes successful use of ambient sounds that gracefully break the silence, placing his film at a high level not only visually but also aurally.

The film also becomes an example of a stylised work by bringing before us, one after another, sounds and images occurring at the same time in different places. Yes, perhaps this choice is not very new or original, but when the father angrily and unhappily scribbling with a pencil in the notebook in his hands and his son quickly rubbing his hands together so as not to freeze in the cold appear before us one after the other, they create a truly striking moment. To these we should undoubtedly add single images such as the drops of water dripping from melting ice or the snowflakes swirling over the ground, and the success with which nature as a whole is presented in a way that reflects the mood expressed in the film itself: “whoever comes here cries, and whoever leaves cries too”.

And the film’s heart-wrenching sadness: the fact that every character is waiting for something, and the hopelessness of this waiting, make this sadness tangible, while also standing out for the way they enrich the story in the book. A letter that does not come but which, when it does, will turn uncertainty into a devastating blow; an awaited wife, an awaited father, and the minibus passengers awaited in order to earn a few pennies… It is impossible not to be moved by this story of waiting and poverty, carried into another dimension and supported by the music of Mircan Kaya, herself a child of the region where the story takes place, which won an award in Antalya. The film is even more striking in the moments when it shows people alone – the silent and lonely unhappiness of the mother in the house where she works as a maid, the boy’s hard and solitary walks from his home to the rest stop, or the loneliness the father lives through in prison, isolated from the world, apart from one unnecessary moment – and it also deserves attention for a scene, not found in the book, that sets the honesty of those who live intertwined with the purity of nature against the selfishness of people who live far from nature, shown in a scene that is in the book (I am referring to the scenes of the change and the dropped wallet). A magical, realistic film that does not miss what is local.

*****

*** http://www.gurkankilicaslan.com/kar-beyaz-selim-gunes-2010/