hoarding nature
by
Douglas Messerli
Metin
Erksan, Kemal İnci, and İsmet Soydan (screenplay, based on a story by Necati
Cumalı), Metin Erksan (director) Susuz
Yaz (Dry Summer) / 1964
The
Turkish film Dry Summer features an
outright old-fashioned villain, Osman (Erol Taş) who suddenly one day
maliciously decides to damn up a spring on his property, the source of water
for his tobacco-farming neighbors as well.
His more handsome and caring younger
brother, Hasan (Ulvi Dogan) attempts to dissuade him in his decision,
explaining that such an act will surely not well with the neighbors and the
community at large. But Osman refuses to listen, and goes ahead with his plan.
As the younger brother, Hasan and his local fiancée Bahar (Hülya Koçyiğit) have
little choice but to go along with him.
Besides the young couple, desperately in
love, have wedding plans on their minds. In one of the earliest scenes,
director Metin Erksan depicts their love-making in a patch of tall reeds,
wherein Hasan must discover her before they can make love, that scene
emphasizing the force of nature that has overtaken them and their rapport with
it. Soon after, they are married, despite the wishes of Bahar’s mother.
Rather than accept the natural world in
which he lives, Osman has determined to steal what the villagers describe as
“earth’s blood,” holding onto the natural resource for use only on his own land. Obviously, in attempting to go
against the dictates of the natural—the water naturally flows from the spring
to the farms below—Hasan’s prediction comes true: things do go terribly wrong.
At first, the locals take Osman to court, where they win, the damn being removed
by authorities.
But when Osman countersues, and the
verdict is reversed by a higher judge, the same authorities are forced restore
the small, home-made damn. As their crops shrivel up in the title’s dry summer,
the neighbors take things into their own hands, moving towards Osman’s spring en masse; amazingly he battles them off.
But when, later, a couple of the men return to remove the damn, he demands that
his brother join him in shooting expedition that ends with the death of one of
the men.
Erksan carefully shows Hasan refusing to
fire, so that we know Osman has killed the villager. Yet Osman insists that
Hasan take on the guilt, assuring his brother that because he is younger and
married, he will get a lighter prison-term than the elder.
In this fable-like story, the innocent is
sent to prison, while the greedy brother remains at home to tend the farm and
lust after Bahar. When she and Osman attempt to visit Hasan in prison, we
discover that Hasan has been sent to another prison, further away. And soon
after we discover that Osman has been ripping up his brother’s letters instead
of passing them on to his wife.
Like a hungry panther, Osman circles Bahar,
watching her undress through a slat of wood, intensely staring at her—at one
point, while milking a cow in her presence, sucking on the beast’s tits— and
finally touching up against her, ready for the rape. When she finally hears
that Hasan had died in prison, she gives in to Osman’s demands.
Hasan, we discover soon after, has not
died, and upon being given his freedom, is warned by a lawyer, to lay low.
Clearly, however, in his bitter silence,
Hasan has been changed, and we can tell as this former gentle man storms across
the fields that he plans for revenge. Bahar, attempting to undo the damn yet
again, is shot by Osman. Hasan nonetheless proceeds to his brother, finally
drowning him in the water he has attempted to claim for his own, Osman’s body slowly
being dragged downstream, as the water is released for all to use.
As I have suggested, there is a fable-like
quality to this work; and it ends in that magical world: Bahar has not been
killed, but only wounded, and is carried to safety by her husband.
Clearly, Erksan’s work was highly
influenced by Italian neo-realism; yet, with its surrealist-like images and
fabulist trappings, it is a great statement of Turkish cinema, winning the
Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Never
before had a Turkish product been so highly awarded, and one might have thought
that this film would have led to a new level in Turkish film-making. But its very
success caused a huge uproar among other film directors for the government to
permit the showing of European and American works, resulting in a near
abandonment of serious local filmmaking. Only in his last years of his life did
the director—who was censored and finally left the film industry, producing
primarily TV—see his 1964 film restored and his countrymen giving new respect
for his and other Turkish film pioneer’s works.
At 83, Erksan died this year of
complications from kidney disease.
November 21, 2012
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