Fate by Zeki Demirkubuz
Dermirkubuz’s Fate is not The Outsider. The stories are similar and some events are identical, however Dermirkubuz’s Musa and Camus’ Meursault are not the same man. Outwardly both men lead very similar lives but inwardly Demirkubuz leaves us to guess what goes on in Musa’s head. Camus deliberately wrote The Outsider in the first person but without reflection. We hear what Meursault sees and does, but we get very little analysis from him. In fact, the only time we get any insight into Meursault’s feelings is when he is standing opposite the Arab on the beach with the gun in his hand, and while he is in prison awaiting execution.
Musa’s motives and feelings are not explored in Fate. At the very end of the film we get to see him talk a little about his philosophy on life but we get no indication of what it feels like to be Musa. Many reviews of Fate have referred to the film as ‘existential,’ but this isn’t exactly true. Musa doesn’t think about his existence, or if he does, we the viewer know nothing of this thought. Meursault has spent some time coming to terms with his existence, in prison he experiences great surges of passion for life and existential revelations. Musa on the other hand, displays no passion for life and appears indifferent as to whether he lives or dies.
It is inevitable and unfortunate that some people will come away from Fate thinking Musa and Meursault (and perhaps Camus) are pretty much the same guy. This is not true. Musa and Meursault’s lives are similar, they come from similar backgrounds, have similar jobs and friends and experience some oddly similar events. At one point in the film, the prosecutor, while reading through Musa’s file, comments “your life is similar to a character in a French novel I once read.” But ultimately, Musa and Meursault are two different men, with very different outlooks on life.
The film itself is watchable and filmed in a restrained and controlled way. Since Demirkubuz makes no claim other than basing the film on Camus’ work he cannot be fairly accused of misinterpreting The Outsider. In fact the comparison between Meursault and Musa will be quite valuable to Camus scholars.
Verdict: A worthwhile film, enjoyable to watch with interesting comparisons to be made between Camus’ Meursault and Dermirkubuz’s Musa.
The Albert Camus Society of the U.K. camus-society.com. 2005.
Fate: Tales About Darkness
The first film of a projected trilogy, Fate is loosely based on Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger and is presented with the same economical means of expression (both in production and aesthetic choices) as Demirkubuz’s earlier films.
Musa (Serdar Orcin) works in a customs office. He is a fatalist with little sense of initiative or self-interest. As the film develops, he is involved in some absurd deaths but declines to declare his innocence—feeling both a general guilt and the inevitability of fate.
Musa’s indifference, his anomie, sets him apart from most of us, yet it is an understandable response to the people who surround him, who lie, commit adultery, kill, and seek to take advantage of others.
Demirkubuz seems to use fixed camera positions to visualize Musa’s passive responses. As in The Third Page, scenes are shot in dark hallways. We look down one corridor as characters enter and exit our field of vision, stepping into and out of different doorways, wordlessly searching—all in a single, uninterrupted camera “take.” Beyond the chronological duration of this shot there is its visual composition. In the hallway, the horizontal film frame is reshaped into a narrow vertical. The “re-framing” of this and several scenes in Fate, and in Demirkubuz’s other films, is very effective in focusing our attention. In The Third Page, one shot is made from beneath a table, masking out much of the screen, a device often used by D.W. Griffith. This is not to suggest an homage to Griffith any more than the editing of Block C is an overt reference to Godard, but rather to say that Demirkubuz has learned from many filmmakers.
This brings up Luchino Visconti, who made his own film from the Camus novel, but not with the sly humor of Demirkubuz. His sense of the capricious nature of experience—the way events can suddenly turn upon themselves—is one factor in Fate’s success. And, again, we have the doors (of justice!) swinging open of their own volition.
Robert A. Haller. Five Films by Zeki Demirkubuz. 2003.
Bosporus Straits
…Bleaker still is Zeki Demirkubuz’s Fate, a riff on Camus’ The Stranger that’s a festival standout. The film’s protagonist—a less dangerous but no less benumbed version of the novel’s Meursault—comes across a little like Travis Bickle drained of redemptive impulses, and Demirkubuz’s dispassionate, beautifully controlled style neatly mirrors the character’s near comical enervation…
Mark Holcomb. Village Voice. October 15, 2002.
Excerpt.
Yazgı / Fate
In his films, Zeki Demirkubuz dives recklessly into the fundamental contradictions of life without being afraid of falling into deep and basic controversies. He passionately searches for his human-ness in the darkness. Yazgı (Fate, 2001),the first film in his trilogy “Tales of Darkness,” offers a controversial interpretation of Albert Camus’s literary classic of alienation, The Stranger.
The title of the film refers to a central, recurring motif in Demirkubuz’s cinema: destiny. His latest masterpiece carries a similar name, Kader (Destiny, 2006). Both of these words signify destiny while Fate especially underlines predetermination. “Written on my forehead,” a frequently used colloquial saying in Turkish, signifies a mode of thinking connected to the more Islamic way of resigning oneself to God. The gist of the film lies in its interpretation of the discourse of apathy and socially detached individuality in The Stranger as an unchangeable destiny. For Demirkubuz, the darkness of the underground is a fate to be borne by human beings in life.
In name, our anti-hero Musa (Serdar Orçin)—surely one of the personas of the director himself—echoes Meursault and the prophet Moses. He lives alone with his mother in a lower-class neighborhood in Istanbul and works in an ordinary customs office. He has simple but persistent habits, and his taciturn and distanced attitude reveals itself in his standard reply to all questions: “I don’t care, it’s all equal to me.” Contrary to expectations, things happen in the course of the film but do not lead to catharsis or epiphany for Musa. He does not react to finding his mother dead in her bed one day. He does not care that he is marrying a young woman he does not like or even care to get to know. He shows no reaction when he is sentenced to life in prison for three murders he did not commit. Fleshed out marvelously by Serdar Orçin, Musa carries the same disinterested and blank attitude throughout the entire film, which makes it difficult for the audience to identify with him. Since Demirkubuz understands the nihilism of the underground as the main critique of the morals of society, of what is deemed good and evil in life, he presents Musa’s absurd apathy not as an adopted behavior but as a critical frame of mind that he has had from the beginning as a radical choice about life. Musa is a silent spokesman interrogating the hypocrisy of values, vice, guilt, and the pseudo- correctness of society’s morality.
The power of Fate comes from Demirkubuz’s confrontation with his audience’s expectations, both morally and cinematically. In a long dialogue near the end of the film, Demirkubuz explains his stance on developing a film such as this, and through Musa’s words he challenges the audience by asking them the source of Musa’s guilt: Is Musa guilty of homicide now or of not being sad about his mother’s death? Demirkubuz persistently escapes the clichés of psychologically-oriented films. While escaping them, he uses seemingly under-elaborated visual aesthetics that never overwhelm his effective storytelling, but instead nourish it. In the end, it is impossible not to react to what he does in Fate. He thrives on the fundamental question of what is beyond good and evil, and urges the audience to look into their own darkness through his controversial, archetypal individual of modernity, coming this time not from France but from Turkey.
Ovul Durmusoglu. Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz. Eds. Zeynep Dadak-Enis Kostepen. New York: Altyazı, Arte East, Moon and Stars Project. 2007.
Fate
Take the ennui of Camus, the soul of Bresson and the unwavering gaze of Kiarostami and you might get something like Zeki Demirkubuz’s Fate. The first part of a trilogy from the Turkish director, Fate is almost a literal rendition of Camus’ The Outsider translated to present-day Istanbul. Its faithful depiction of 1950s French existential angst helped it become one of the successes of this year’s Cannes festival.
Office worker Musa wakes one morning to find his elderly mother asleep in her bed. On his return from work, he realises she is dead. He also realises that her death has very little effect on him; indeed, he is almost pleased. It wasn’t that he wanted her dead, but with her gone, life is a little freer. Which is where his problems begin. The numb Musa sleepwalks through the remains of his life: he gets married, becomes involved with a petty gangster and is charged with a triple murder.
None of this provokes the least reaction from Musa, and Demirkubuz follows his fate with equal ambivalence, letting the narrative draw out the big themes that he – and his source – want to address: the responsibility of the individual, how and if we control our own destiny, the place of religion in a secular state. In case we miss the point, Demirkubuz uses the final half hour to revisit the story through a series of interrogations. Here, the directness and simplicity of his technique come to the fore: as Musa shares a cigarette with his gaolers, the camera looks through the cell window toward the sound of a bird singing; the climactic interrogation is punctuated by the door to the chief prosecutor’s office randomly swinging open thanks to a faulty lock. This man knows his Bresson.
The second part of the trilogy, Confession, is equally impressive, while for the final part Demirkubuz plans to tackle Dostoevsky. On this showing, he should prove equal to the task.
Dan Gleister. The Guardian. August 20, 2002.
Confession
Zeki Demirkubuz’s fifth film, İtiraf (Confession, 2001), takes Turkey’s capital city Ankara as its primary setting. A rare choice for a Turkish filmmaker, Ankara (unlike cosmopolitan Istanbul) is a city known for its large middle class composed mainly of government officials and bureaucrats. The somewhat dull atmosphere of Ankara finds its reflection in the gloomy, claustrophobic internal shots that make up most of the film. Demirkubuz’s trademark scenes with television sets in hotel rooms and doors that constantly open and close are also present here, but to a lesser degree. And, as in his other films, long intense monologues update viewers on off-screen plot developments.
An engineer in his late thirties, Harun (Taner Birsel), suspects his wife, Nilgün (Başak Köklükaya), of being unfaithful. When the uncertainty becomes unbearable, he cuts short a business trip to Istanbul and abruptly returns home to Ankara, unannounced. His worries are confirmed when he overhears his wife whispering on the phone to someone he does not know. During a tense dinner in an upscale restaurant, Harun forces Nilgün to confess what he believes he already knows. The acrimonious dispute is followed by a long and torturous process of physical and psychological violence, which reveals that the couple’s marriage rests on a mutual feeling of guilt towards their deceased friend Taylan, who committed suicide some years earlier. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that the “confession” refers both to Harun’s desperate struggle to make Nilgün confess her infidelity and his irresistible drive to confess what he deems a sin to Taylan’s family.
Confession, the second installment in the director’s “Tales of Darkness” trilogy, strives to unveil the darkness of the human soul and the potential evil that lies within it. Harun’s constant torturing of himself and his wife, Nilgün’s infidelity and her refusal to confess, and the couple’s inability to engage in any kind of genuine communication with each other offer an extremely pessimistic view of human nature. Nevertheless, the film can also be interpreted to be about the weakness, or the fragility of the human psyche. All the evil done is the result of the characters’ weakness and vulnerability. Harun’s insistence on making his wife confess is connected to his own guilt about his responsibility in his best friend’s suicide.
In a recent interview reproduced at the end of this catalog, Demirkubuz says, “I think two high level positions must be created: shame and confession. I believe that a better life could be built only on these two positions. Neither the development of technology nor modernity can solve the problems of humanity in the absence of shame and confession, which are the greatest inventions of humankind―the most sublime levels that humanity can ever reach.” In Confession, the shame and guilt carried in their hearts destroy Harun and Nilgün’s relationship and their lives. Ironically however, confronting this guilt is what liberates them and provides them with a slight possibility to start anew. What can make us evil, is what makes us human. This is why, despite all the darkness and the misery, it is possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of hope in the sad and uncertain ending of the film.
Berke Göl. Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz. Eds. Zeynep Dadak-Enis Köstepen. New York: Altyazı, ArteEast, Moon and Stars Project. 2007.
Un Certain Regard
Zeki Demirkubuz dissects adultery
So cold “Itiraf”
Here’s a film where everything’s positively perfect: elaborate script, well written dialogue, flawless filmmaking technique, inspired actors (Taner Birsel and Basak Koklukaya). All of them are committed to the portrayal of the ordinary drama of a couple’s life. Harun, wealthy engineer, and his bride, Nilgun, are in deep crisis: she cheats on him, he wants her to confess (hence the title, Itiraf, or “Confession”).
The camera operates coldly, a lesson in the dissection of certain wounds of marriage, empty redundancy if there ever was one. Like a Strindberg in Ankara, Zeki Demirkubuz traces his unique path after four films. But how is it possible that all of these qualities leave us as cold as ice? Without resorting to resurrecting the famous phrase, “sublime but annoying” once uttered about a Bergman film, there is a hint of inspiration in the movie. In all fairness, it is known that the sublime is never annoying.
The problem with the film, which creates distance in a repelling style, is precisely his willingness, in a given and already well-outlined genre (the psychological drama), to do everything (too?) well. This care demonstrates at a certain point where it is possible to anticipate what’s going to happen. Thus, when the man pretends to sleep on his side, in the marriage bed, when his wife comes home late, there is little doubt that, a few scenes later, the repetition will occur identically this time with the woman in lieu of the man. Indeed: bingo!
The same thing applies for the masterly subdivision between time of speaking and time of silence (significance) at a point of obligatory parity. It is not certain whether some cuts on the city of Ankara are systematically a good idea to express the feeling that depression in the movie is merely psychological. Like a lamb, Itiraf is a film too well strung.
Gerard Lefort. 2002.
Translated from French by Lorenzo Pesoli.
This film is the second in the yet uncompleted trilogy and is very different—more of a mystery story than Demirkubuz’s other films—and may be Demirkubuz’s best film to date. It resembles the detective novels of the late American writer Ross Macdonald. For Macdonald the torments of his characters were caused by events from long ago that were repressed but not permanently buried. In Confession the principal character, Harun (Taner Birsel), is an engineer whose pursuit of what is destroying his marriage leads him back into his past and that of his wife, Nilgun. The two share a history of betrayal and a failure of coming to terms with their actions. Although Confession resembles Block C in theme and in cinematic structure, I will refrain from discussing the details of the narrative so viewers can make their own discoveries.
In Confession, Demirkubuz uses another of his signature images: the nighttime drive on a highway. There is such a drive early in the film, accomplished with a sensual skill as highway dividing lines “dash” beneath the car while the overhead street lamps are eclipsed one by one by the car’s forward motion (nor should the long rear-view images be overlooked). Demirkubuz is a poet of wanderers and of highways that lead across the landscape of Turkey. In this, he shares a kinship with Omer Kavur whose protagonists also travel across memory, space, and time.
Unlike Musa in Fate, Harun is compelled to look into the past, to inquire into the festering wound that haunts his wife and himself, reducing him to fits of rage and weeping, and her to resolute silence. The emotional intensity—the rawness and its depth—is what sets this film apart from Demirkubuz’s other films.
Demirkubuz’s abrupt style of editing is well suited to this story. Large periods are skipped across with no notice. Years pass by in a flash but there is a clarity of moral vision at work. Near the end, one of the characters remarks that “Nothing is over. It is the time that passes.” Not quite true: sympathy and acceptance can be nurtured in Demirkubuz’s world.
Robert A. Haller. Films by Zeki Demirkubuz. 2003.
Fate / Confession
One of the festivals main highlights and strong competitor for discovery of the year is the first two parts of an as yet uncompleted trilogy from Turkey called ‘Tales Against Darkness‘ (the director was unable to attend the festival because he was shooting the last part this summer.) Zeki Demirkubuz not only writes and directs but also produces and edits his films (he also acts as his own DOP on Confession (Ítíraf, Turkey, 2002). Fate (Yazgi, Turkey, 2001), a fascinating work of adaptation from Albert Camus’s ‘L’Etranger’, follows the novel to a point before it sets out on its own track. One of the most remarkable facets of these films is that there are total confidence and patience, with information held back till the breaking point and no qualms about working from a source that would be too daunting for many a filmmaker. The films are pared down and claustrophobic studies of decay and collapse, of the attraction of darkness (an element that is integrated into the images, from the early shot in Fate where we watch from the end of a corridor all the lights slowly switch off till all that illuminates the image is the distant bedroom window of the protagonist’s mother, to the framing against the night sky in Confession.) In Confession, a study of jealousy and burning uncertainty, we are immersed in the taunt drama between a couple with a scarred past. This more so than ‘Fate’ relies on the structure of information, like a confession, with glimpses of information constantly realigning the status quo. The film starts in relative silence, the liturgical pace is finally broken and we are propelled into the drama on the back of an overheard conversation, the connotations of which explode within the opening silence. These two films are remarkable studies of contemporary ailments, but also highly philosophical works (especially Fate) that explore nihilism and despotism with a bracing assurance as well as a sly wit.
56th Edinburgh International Film Festival. 2003.
Harun (Taner Birsel) is a businessman, who spends most of his time in the city, far away from his wife (Basak Köklükaya), whom he believes to be having an affair.
One night, after returning home unannounced, he finds the bedroom empty. When she
arrives, finally, there are hushed words on the telephone and she slips into bed without waking him. Deciding that he wants to know the truth, he confronts her, demanding an apology for the crime he is sure she has committed. He does get an answer, but it’s not what he expected.
Confession is a visually impressive film, using high contrast digital photography to make the daytime burn and the nights darker than reality. The opening scene is particularly beautiful; a slow pan over a lurid azure sea, past violent yellow cabs on writhing tarmac, into Harun’s office, where you feel the stifling heat and smell the oppressive air. The pacing is deliberate and languorous. Vast expanses of time are spent on intermediate scenes that, in other films, would be used to interconnect plot development. It’s similar to Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love, where the story is spun out in these interludes. The Turkish director, Zeki Demirkubuz, stretches them even further, focussing on a character’s features for extended periods, or during a driving scene, watching the twitching shadows on a dashboard.
The overall impression is that Confession is too slow, and fairly tedious, which is a
shame, because it is well made and beautifully photographed. Also, the story would be more interesting if it was pared down and leaner.
Henry’s Cat. Iofilm UK. 2002.