Belonging (Aidiyet)

Directed by Burak Çevuk. In Turkish with English subtitles. At the Cinematheque on Sunday and Monday (November 8 and 9).

While investigative crime features focus on figuring out who did it, how they did it, and why they did it, this enigmatic and cerebral sophomore effort from a Turkish filmmaker about a ghastly act that impacted his life takes an unexpected approach, and generates as many questions as answers by its conclusion.

The first half is a film within a film. Writer-director Burak Çevik, whose 2018 debut feature Pilar of Salt (Tuzdan Kaide) also explored familial connections in unusual ways, reconstructs how his aunt Perlin and her lover Onur planned and murdered his grandmother in 2003 when he was 10 years old.

In an emotionless voice-over, Çevik reads a statement from Onur before sentencing that chronicles the affair that developed between Perlin and Onur that took a dark turn as Perlin persuaded Onur to help her murder her parents. Çevik’s narration is illustrated with empty shots of locations—the seaside, a car interior, his grandparents’ apartment—being referred to.

The surface details are presented in a straightforward, factual manner of what happened step by step. Aside from some hints about Perlin’s quirkiness, her pervasive depression, and an obsessive approach to her relationship with Onur, there’s not a lot that provides deeper insight into what underlying psychological or emotional factors, particularly when it comes to Onur (who had sought to distance himself from Perlin), that led them to pursue the murder plan so seemingly single-mindedly and shortsightedly.

The second half is another film within this film.

In an abrupt rewind, this version retells the events as a drama portrayed by two actors—Eylül Su Sapan as Pelin and Çaglar Yalçinkaya as Onur. But this fictional version focuses on how Onur met Pelin one evening after spotting her at a bar. Eschewing an inquiry, Çevik appears to take a seemingly antithetical approach—presenting Onur and Pelin as easygoing young adults engaged in casual conversation.

This dramatization only further cofounds any further grasp of what was to come, as their light interactions merely present them as indistinguishable from any other average young couple chatting and getting to know each other. 

The effect is disorienting and that may be what Çevik getting at—that there aren’t any clear or distinct explanations in this case, that what darkness lay beneath the surface remains unknowable and inaccessible, perhaps even to some extent by those involved. After all, when not all questions have answers, it is the schism between our innate need for logic and inexplicable events that can be the most difficult to reconcile.