This one is my final paper for film class. In the essay I compared Nuri Bilge Ceylan's and Zeki Demirkubuz's movies in the context of male subjectivity and love. In some places paper may sound weird because we had some restrictions about word usage, but believe me it was better in original form.
Male
Subjectivity and Love in: Innocence,
Destiny and Three Monkeys
Turkish Cinema was a weak member for
me as one the chains of the world cinema before I had not taken this course.
Westernization and modernization have probably the bigger part of the effect on
my perception about increased expectations from cinema. I was not watching a
lot Turkish movies. I only knew Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his movies as recent
films but Yeşilçam did not mean so much to me. My point is, the biggest thing
that I got from this course is turning attention to our cinema world and
rediscovering it as such. Thank to our instructor and our syllabus, I have
watched so nice and influential Turkish movies which dragged me to rethink
about cinema deeply and to try analysing content, setting, character and so on.
As the subject of this final paper I chose Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s and Zeki
Demirkubuz’s movies, although I have not watched Demirkubuz’s cinema up to now.
Before that I was thinking Ceylan is the best Turkish director and his movies
are worth to re-watch again and again, but when I watched Innocence for the
first time, I was like astonished, shocked by the film and it made a deeply
psychical effect on me. As an audience if I make an evaluation I cannot say
that Ceylan is the best director, instead, now two of them are rivals in my
mind and my heart. On the one hand Ceylan has been awarded many times and his
movies like a bit more philosophical with longer dialogues, longer portrait
scenes etc. and as I watched the movies in chronological sequence I can see
that Ceylan improved himself step by step. From Cacoon to Winter Sleep he
showed a great degree of improvement. His style is like going through making
more sophisticated movies. On the other hand what Demirkubuz does is like
showing us our own reflection on the mirror. As far as I have watched, his
movies are like a mirror for me. In terms of evaluation issue, Demirkubuz has a
style maybe a subject and he applies it to the movies. For instance Destiny is
made almost ten years after Innocence nothing much changed in my opinion. Of
course the movie is the previous story of Innocence so it is expected to be
like each other, but in terms of dialogues I think Innocence is better than the
recent one. Through this paper I will compare and contrast Ceylan’s and
Demirkubuz’s cinema in the concept of male subjectivity and love.
Firstly, I want to begin with
Demirkubuz’s cinema. As I said before, his films are more impactive for me in
terms of psychology. When I watch Innocence, it was a little bit confusing
because strange things are happening in the first scenes. We meet with Yusuf
who is a convict and has his last days in the prison but he gives petition in
order to stay there as long as he lives. We do not know what his crime was and
while he is talking to the manager of the prison, oddly door opens by itself. I
still cannot deal with the opening doors’ mystery. I cannot put it any concept
or anywhere in my mind. Yusuf has an elder sister and her family, but he does
not want to see them somehow and we do not know why? Later we learn that Yusuf
killed his sister’s beloved and it was also his close friend from military
service. At the beginning Yusuf is the protagonist of the movie, but
immediately we meet Uğur and Bekir they become the main characters and when
Bekir commits suicide Uğur and Yusuf come out as main characters. I think it is
a kind of technique in movie making because we have similar features in
literature too. We call it as stream of consciousness in which narration changes
from character to character. Perspective changes back and forth. It reminds me that
characteristic of narrating. First audience witness Yusuf’s life and then it
moves to Uğur and Bekir’s story.
In the movie everyone is chasing his
or her own desired object which belong their fantasy world. Bekir follows Uğur and she follows Zagor and
through the end Yusuf begins following Uğur too. In the beginning we do not
know about past of Uğur and Bekir, later in the picnic scene we learn the past
story. Bekir sacrificed everything in his life for the sake of being with Uğur.
In this manner her name is chosen on purposely because in Turkish language Uğur
has some kind of connotation that refers to something like doing something for
the sake of someone else means “uğruna” so Bekir does everything for the sake
of being with Uğur. However Uğur does not care about him as he does. She is
only interested in her bully boyfriend Zagor. He is in prison and sometimes he
escapes and kills somebody else. As his prison changes Uğur goes after him and
moves from city to city where his prison is located. I said Bekir sacrificed
everything for Uğur, but she also some sort of sacrifices herself for Zagor.
She sleeps with many men in order to be with one man. Zagor is the ideal thing of
Uğur while she is the ideal for Bekir and later Yusuf. It is impossible for her
to approach Zagor because physically he is in prison, but also it is impossible
for Bekir to reach Uğur. She is not prison but she is still unreachable for
him. In the movie we see Bekir has some kind of physical motion when Uğur goes
with Yusuf and he attacks to Uğur by saying that “you have been with anyone
sexually and I want it too”, but she does not. She say “ it is mine” by showing
her private parts and “we are not partner”. It symbolizes unreachability of Uğur for Bekir
not only psychically but also physically. She is very dominant and she
castrates man both psychically and physically. Nevertheless Uğur benefits from
Bekir’s feelings for her. He is like a body guard to her, but she never allows
him to interfere any of her doings. That is the castration of men in the movie.
She is aggressive and a tough woman for Bekir, so the film is not a male
dominated but woman dominated in this manner. We have two women; one is Uğur
and the other is Yusuf’s elder sister. She is mute woman. She lost her tongue
with the bullet of Yusuf’s gun, but still she castrates men. Her husband
suffers from her disinterestedness and beats her with his belt but she does not
counteract. Somehow with her tongue less position she stands by what she had
done. When Yusuf goes their home she does not look at his face. It is like
defencing still what she has done. These women characters are narcissistic and
selfish because they do not care about their children let alone other men whom
they attracted to themselves. Uğur does not beware to torture Bekir and later Yusuf
this way or that way. Bekir leaves anything behind for her but she seems
careless. Only thing she sees is Zagor. Still Bekir cannot approach to her that
gives him a psychical pain rather than a physical one as Juan-David Nasio describes in his article “In contrast
to corporeal pain caused by a wound, psychical pain takes place without
physical injury. The cause that triggers it is no longer located in the flesh
but in the bond between the one who loves and the object of his or her love”
(Nasio 19). That gives Bekir psychical pain
a lot. In the picnic scene he tells to Yusuf how he follows Uğur and what he
tells is like he is chasing her unconsciously like Uğur is somehow pulling him
to herself. In Destiny, at the last scene, in the dialogue between Uğur and
Bekir this fact reveals clearly. Bekir knows that Uğur is his destiny and he
knows what he will pay for it, but still he chooses this way because he cannot bear
without Uğur. In the same article this situation is explained by a scientific
way
“…pain
is the affect that expresses the conscious perception by the ego-inner
perception- of the state of shock, of libidinal disturbance (trauma), which is
not provoked by the rupture of the peripheral barrier of the ego as in the case
of corporeal pain, but by the sudden rupture of the bond that attaches us to
loved one. Here, pain is the pain of trauma” (Nasio 19).
Bekir
is attached to Uğur psychically just like Uğur is attached to Zagor. Neither
Bekir nor Uğur can bear the loss of the ideal belongings of their fantasy
world. The general motto of the Demirkubuz’s mentioned movies is “The more one
loves the more one suffers” (Nasio 20). This psychical situation reflects to the character’s mood. They are
not happy, they do simile barely. Since they lost their beloved ones they are
in melancholic mood in a way. In Destiny while Bekir is living with his family
he is always unhappy and he does not care about his wife or his child. While his
child is sick he seeks for medicine and when he finds he does not turn back to
the home, but instead he goes to the city where Uğur lives. He is a selfish
father. Like women characters of the movie, he never concerns about his child.
In Destiny we see same attitude in Uğur’s mother’s behaviour. The only thing
that concerns her is Cevat not her children or her sick husband so Uğur, Bekir
and Yusuf’s sister behave in the same way in Innocence. What is the common
thing that makes these people so reckless about someone from their own blood? I
think the answer is one of the most strong feeling that is theme of this paper.
It makes them blind and selfish somehow and when they lose that what is the
most precious thing for them, they see nothing as important included their
families and they become melancholic. Loss of the idealized thing in a way
drags them to a melancholic mood. Mari
Ruti explains this position in her article; “Melancholia thus results from the
kinds of losses that the subject experiences as unbearable” (Ruti 639). They
cannot bear for what they lost and psychical pain is an inevitable form of pain
for them. Since the beloved one is so precious for these characters, namely
Uğur, Bekir and later Yusuf, they want to protect whom they want to be in order
to not to lose again. Bekir suffers a lot, he does not want her to go other
men’s bed but he cannot stop her either. What if she leaves her again? How can
he bear this? Instead he lets her go knowingly that she will be with another man.
By the way Uğur makes her income through this job and Bekir uses her money in
order to survive. You see how much difficult for Bekir to live with these
facts. He has to overlook what Uğur is doing for the sake of not to lose her
again. He tries to protect her in his own way; the gun that he carries will
bring his death. Interestingly the one for whom he devotes his life does not
feel upset or guilty when he commits suicide. Protecting the object was Bekir’s
duty and when Yusuf jumps into their life he gets that he can revolve his
mission to this guy. I think while he is dying he still cares about Uğur and
his protection like explained in this quotation “Melancholia therefore provides
the subject an indirect means of sheltering objects that it considers so
precious that their loss seems inconceivable” (Ruti 639). Protecting the
precious one was a compulsory task for Bekir and he dedicates his life to her.
In Destiny, Bekir is shot by Zagor’s man but he does not give up chasing Uğur.
He knows from the beginning that this passion will cost his life but that
nothing can restrain him for doing so.
If I pass through the Ceylan’s Three
Monkeys, the situation seems a little different. In the movie Hacer is
housewife whose husband is in prison and she has a teenager boy. When we look
at her and İsmail’s relation, as we discussed in class, the desire of wholeness
is on the stage. While Eyüp is in the prison father’s law is invalid and that
gives İsmail to reveal his oedipal complex. He looks her mother through her keyhole
of her bedroom and sometimes we see Hacer from his perspective. He wants to
make an oedipal tie with is mother because there is no father threat at all.
Every man in the movie looks Hacer from their own perspectives. The only woman
in the movie we see is Hacer and I guess in this way Ceylan wants to show male
perspective about woman. However he was criticized by feminist critics for
showing Hacer powerless and defenceless. Hacer is a typical wife and mother of
the children for Eyüp, İsmail owns her as his subject while his father is not
around and when Servet appears he becomes a threat for İsmail that what if his
mother choose him? In Servet’s perspective Hacer is an attractive woman and
when Hacer goes to his office her mobile phone rings a song about amour that
signifies Hacer’s longings and later her femininity comes out. These feelings
were in Hacer but we cannot see them till she meets Servet. “Certain
individuals, certain kinds of emotional tones, evoke deep- rooted unconscious longings
and thus prove quite difficult to resist” (Ruti 645). In this manner Hacer want
to establish her femaleness and she discovers it is possible with Servet that
is why after their sexual interactions she still continues following him. She
is like, she lost something about herself with her long lasting marriage and
she wants to expose it. That is her womanhood in my opinion, but same thing is
not valid for Servet. He looks her like an entertainment, one night relation.
“… he can desire women he doesn’t love, so as to get back to the virile
position he suspends when he loves. Freud called this principle the ‘debasement
of love life’ in men: the split between love and sexual desire” (Miller 1).
Ismail as a male boy wants to be whole his mother again just like before his
birth. Somewhere middle of the film we see İsmail’s brother comes from the door
with water dropping from his face, most probably İsmail killed or drowned him
in order to not to share his mother. “… we see the two sides of love
distinguished by Freud: either you love the person who protects, in this case
the mother, or you love a narcissistic image of yourself” (Miller 3). Ismail’s
feeling is that kind one and Servet’s feelings are the second option clearly.
When Hacer leaves his office we see Hacer walking down the street through
Servet’s perspective and he looks her from upside. It is like he looks down
upon her. Servet gives her money and he behaves like it gives him some rights
upon Hacer. In my opinion, in fact he has no feeling for her. He is not the man
of normal expression of amour, but something else’s “‘I love to you’ becoming
‘I love (what belongs) to me.’ Any more than it is: I marry you, in the sense
that I am making you my wife or my husband, that is: I take you, I am making
you mine” (Irigaray 110). Servet and Eyüp share common sense about Hacer. They
look him as if she is an object of them. By looking feminist critiques, they
seem right for the first sight. Hacer seems defenceless when her husband beats
her and in the balcony scene where Hacer wants to attempt suicide she is
desperate for being reason of his son’s homicide. Firstly I thought the same
thing as feminist critiques but later my mind changed because it is the male
gaze wants her to do this “… men can only be aggressive and potent if women are
passive and impotent” (Silverman 140) so it is the male gaze that shows her in
this way. Maybe these scenes are not real but we see them from the perspectives
of men in the film. Their way of looking shows Hacer desperate and helpless.
All in all, I know I passed beyond
the word restrictions, but to sum up these three movies show us how male
domination works or does not work. I mean male is castrated in Demirkubuz’s
cinema and his two movies are female dominated while in Ceylan’s movie the
roles reverse and woman has gaze on her. Demirkubuz intelligently shows male
lack to the audience “… that the typical male subject, like his female
counterpart, might learn to live with lack” (Silverman 65). As a common point all suffered characters
issue is love. It sometimes ruins lives or corrupts. Writing about them and
watching them carefully make me think about myself. I am not the woman of love,
but I do still have a relation and I think step by step I am going to be someone
like Bekir.
Works
Cited
Irigaray, Luce. I
Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History trans. Alison Martin: Routledge.
New York, 1996. Print.
Miller, Jacques - Alain & Waar, Hanna. “We Loved
the One Who Responds to Our Question:’ Who am I?’” http://lacan.com/symptom/?page_id=263
2014.
Nasio, Juan-David. “Psychical Pain, Pain of Love” The Book of Love and Pain: State
University of New York Press, 2004. Print.
Ruti, Mari. “From Melancholia to Meaning How to Live
the Past in the Present” Psychoanalytic
Dialogues. 15.5, 2005. Print.
Silverman, Kaja. “The Subject” The Subject of Semiotics: Oxford University Press, 1984. Print.
Silverman, Kaja. “Historical Trauma and Male
Subjectivity” Male Subjectivity at the
Margins: Routledge. New York, 1992. Print.
