Senem Aytac. Destiny. Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz.
Destiny
We have heard the story of Kader (Destiny, 2006) before, long before we saw the movie. It was told to us, almost ten years ago, by Bekir (Haluk Bilginer), one of the main characters in Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997), in a long—and almost immediately legendary—monologue. It was the story of how Bekir first met Ugur, how he fell for her immediately, and how he followed her from one city to another as his obsession grew stronger and stronger. While Bekir pursues Ugur, she goes after another man, Zagor, who is continuously transported from one prison to another, because he cannot stop committing crimes. Destiny, tells the story of this impossible love triangle and follows their journey all along the way.
The film opens in Bekir’s father’s carpet shop. Ugur walks into the store, awakens Bekir from his nap and (knowingly or unknowingly) seduces him. Bekir instantly falls in love with her and soon after learns the story of Ugur and Zagor. It is very hard to tell whether Bekir’s obsession is with Ugur, or the impossible situations that she gets herself into. These troubled situations breathe passion and desire into her life by giving meaning to her existence. In fact, her existence is defined within these situations.
Chronologically, the story of Destiny, should be set in the 1980s as it is the prequel to Innocence. However, Demirkubuz sets the film in the present, in an immediate and timeless present that is beyond history, beyond linear time. It is a story about love, desire and obsession, all of which belong to time unbound. Since these notions exist outside chronological time, the experiences that come with these feelings are also timeless.
Destiny can also be considered a road movie. However, unlike many films that deal with the idea of the journey, these characters are not on a voyage of self-discovery but instead seek to escape from themselves—to give up, let go, forget themselves in a fully imprisoned state of the other. Therefore, these characters can never acquire the objects of their desire, because desire has no particular object and so can never fully be satisfied. What’s more, they are not actually willing to fulfill their desires. They are hunting for an indeterminate experience, this impossible journey; in short they are in search of desire itself.
Near the end of the film, Bekir says to Ugur: “In this fucking world, everyone has something to believe in, and I believe in you.” Strikingly, Bekir defines his obsession as belief. In a slightly different scenario, one where Bekir had not met Ugur, he would have become the man who married the woman his parents had picked for him and would have worked in the furniture shop that his father had set-up for him. We cannot help but think of this alternate scenario every time Bekir unwillingly returns home, but never manages to stay there. It is hard, therefore, to claim that he would have been a free man if he had never met and become a prisoner of Ugur. At first sight, the title Destiny makes us think that Bekir is destined for Ugur and he cannot escape this destiny. But on a second thought, it is Ugur who is an escape for him from his predestined life, a life determined for him by his family, by the society. Bekir’s fixation on Ugur seems to him to be the only way to break away from his destiny. It is freedom for him, hidden within an absolute imprisonment.
Senem Aytac. Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz. Eds. Zeynep Dadak – Enis Kostepen. New York: Altyazı, ArteEast, Moon and Stars Project. 2007.
