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Film critic Yeşim Tabak penned this article for the catalogue of the 22th. Golden Boll International Film Festival where I was heading the jury of the National Films Competition.
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Film critics love to
make generalizations in order to refer to the sociology of a specific
period or trends in cinema. This is the very reason why you won’t
always find Ümit Ünal mentioned in pieces that summarize the recent
history of Turkish cinema under particular movements. Quite simply,
we don’t know where to place Ünal. We can’t easily pin him down
or class him together with a group of other filmmakers. Although he
came into our lives as a Yeşilçam screenwriter in the 1980s, we
would be wrong, for example, to describe him as ‘an ambassador of
the Yeşilçam tradition’. Similarly, it would be hard to identify
him with the spirit of the 1980s. After all, it is the same person
who resurfaces at the beginning of the 2000s as the director of 9,
a feature both independent and experimental in terms of form, style
and production setup. It was also the first Turkish film to be shot
entirely in digital format.
Ümit Ünal is like
a grown-up (because he can empathize) child in a country of adult
children (seemingly serious on the outside but stuck in a
narcissistic phase on the inside): he is prepared to experiment, to
explore unknown avenues; he is a multitalented artist (who is
actively involved in literature and illustration, as well as having
dabbled with theatre and music) eager to follow his imagination and
content to remain in a ‘state of becoming’ rather than conform
to a rigid schema. Despite this eternally youthful outlook, we see
even in Teyzem
(My Aunt),
which he wrote when he was just 21, and in his other best films a
screenwriter aware of the complexity of feelings. My
Aunt won Ünal a place in the hearts of
the Turkish public at the point where art house and commercial cinema
overlap. With heart wrenching authenticity, the drama builds a world
from tragicomic manifestations of halfway modernization, from
individualization thwarted by hypocritical social morality, womanhood
disabled by neighbourhood pressures, and the amalgam of ‘best
friend / half mother/ lover of sorts’ that defines the aunt-nephew
relationship. The film brought to light a wound that we knew was
there, but hadn’t named.
The success of My
Aunt gave Ünal the chance to gain
experience as the writer (or co-writer) of numerous films in the
twilight years of the Yeşilçam era during the late 1980s and early
1990s. Even more significantly, it allowed him to work with masters
of the older generation, such as Atıf Yılmaz, Şerif Gören and
Ertem Eğilmez. The results include Milyarder
(The Billionaire),
Hayallerim, Aşkım ve Sen
(My Dreams, My Love and You),
Arkadaşım Şeytan
(Devil, My Friend),
Piano Piano Bacaksız
(Piano Piano Kid),
Amerikalı
(The American)
and Berlin in Berlin.
Yeşilçam’s
masters were used to working fast with limited production budgets.
They represent a kind of filmmaking that sometimes produced
masterpieces, sometimes churned out commercial fare with only sparse
pleasing qualities, and alternated between the idealistic artist and
the humble labourer. One of the things Ünal gained from working with
these masters was the need for practicality regarding the production
process. Anyone who has worked on one of his film sets will confirm
that when constrained by circumstances Ünal knows how to focus on a
solution rather than take it out on his cast and crew. His career is
quite unlike most others in the present-day Turkish film industry
inasmuch as it follows a zigzagging path that has enabled him to take
on different roles (as just screenwriter, just director or ‘auteur’,
but also as a TV drama series or commercials director), and projects
that are sometimes entirely personal, sometimes manifestly
commercial. Another aspect in which Ünal shares common ground with
the older generations is his ability to construct a classic narrative
where events follow on from one another on the principle of action
and reaction. Ümit Ünal is above all a storyteller. Rather than
obsessively rework a theme, he produces all kinds of stories that
demand very different production setups. If you try asking what is in
the pipeline, you will find scores of astonishing projects awaiting
the appropriate conditions, some of which may never be made.
Perhaps the most
successful of Ünal’s many and varied projects are those films
where his auteur presence is strong and the production is defined by
a minimal cast and crew, limited locations and a low budget. The most
obvious examples that come to mind are 9,
in which he digs the dirt on the occasionally romanticized
‘traditional Turkish neighbourhood’, and then Ara
and Nar
(The
Pomegranate),
where he explores characters with desirable careers in the city who
aspire to the bourgeoisie yet represent a state of ‘inbetweenness’
on the matter of modernization. These three pictures expose a sense
of decay fuelled by social morality and anxieties about image; and
they are fiercely critical. That said, Ünal’s concern is not to
judge or be critical. He accepts his characters with their various
flaws; he builds empathy with them, while not necessarily feeling the
need to show sympathy. What the director really finds interesting and
significant is how the flaws of the different characters interact,
how they trigger one another off, and what kind of conundrums they
create. Views concerning his other work as a director are various.
But each of these films have added colour to Turkish cinema history
in respect of the subject matter they deal with.
Gölgesizler
(The Shadowless),
an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Hasan Ali Toptaş, deals with
the relationship between time and place in a surreal structure that
roams the boundaries of the mind. The film also presents possibly the
most courageous example of contemporary cinema in the formal sense.
Understanding or not understanding the picture and liking or not
liking it are issues that have been much discussed. Yet whichever way
you decide, Ünal has created an atmosphere that is sure to be
remembered. In Anlat İstanbul
(Istanbul Tales),
he adapts western fairy tales to present-day Istanbul and brings
together a team of five directors, including himself. This is a film
where he has the chance to combine being experimental with
high-budget filmmaking and an all-star cast. Inspired by the
fantastic B movies of 1970s and 1980s Turkish cinema, Kaptan
Feza
(Captain Feza)
fits into the same unsophisticated B-movie mould itself. On the other
hand, with Ses
(The Voice),
which was written by Uygar Şirin, Ünal successfully raises the bar
of the Turkish thriller genre, which has all too often been condemned
to cheap populism.
For Sofra
Sırları (Secrets
of Turkish Cuisine), which he will
begin shooting next year, Ünal has cast Hülya Avşar, the diva of
Turkish popular culture, in the role of a serial killer. Ünal’s
career, like many of his characters, epitomizes different extremes
and features many instances of ‘inbetweenness’. But it is also
evidence of the very broad perception of the world that can go hand
in hand with not being any single, clear-cut thing. Looking back on
his 30-year background in cinema, you can’t help but look forward
impatiently to his upcoming films.
