Forgotten Films: Metin Erksan’s Dry Summer

Dear Martin Scorcese,

I love you, and not just for your films.

I don’t love you just for Taxi Driver, and the amazing scene at the end where Travis Bickle puts the bloody finger to his temple in fun gun imitation.

I don’t love you just for Gangs Of New York, a marvelous film of yours criticized harshly, but remains one of my favorites.

I don’t love you just for Joe Pesci’s character in GoodFellas.

No.  Martin Scorcese, I love you, because you love film.  You define the word, ‘cinephile.’

At the 2007 Cannes (as in Kahn, as in The Wrath Of) film festival, you and your cohorts, your international Filmmakers Board, launched The World Cinema Foundation.  Your mission, to preserve and restore neglected films from around the world.

Martin Scorsese has created the World Cinema Foundation with the specific purpose of calling attention to the global cause of film preservation.

It is today that I, a fellow cinephile, begin to receive the spoils of you and your cohorts toils, for you have teamed up with The Auteurs to present the first four films restored by the WCF, four films that span the globe, in topic and in time.

Today I have seen one of these four films.  A film in which, following it’s reception of the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1964, the year of it’s release, was “taken captive” by the Turkish government, who objected to it’s representing Turkey overseas, and then forgotten about entirely for the following 45 years.

The film is Susuz Yaz, or Dry Summer, by Turkish filmmaker Metin Erksan.  This was my first foray into Turkish cinema, and I did not have many expectations.

The film opens with a mustachioed man named Osman (Erol Tas) riding a donkey, and we follow him through town, Turkish guitars serenading us in the soundtrack.  You get a sense of masculine prowess, of responsibility, of duty.  We follow him to his large lot of land, owned by he and his brother, Hassan (Uvi Dogan), and it’s here we quickly delve into the meat of the film.

First, we are introduced to Hassan’s love interest, Bahar, played by the impossibly pretty Hülya Koçyigit, who has 149 films to her credit, 15 of which were released in 1964.  There’s a coy and sweet interchange between the two, but no wedding bells, not at first.  Bahar’s mother has forbidden a wedding before the harvest.  Osman, being the elder and so of course the wiser brother, convinces Hassan to make Bahar run away with him, in turn showing her mother the loss of her daughter is inevitable and it’s irrational to make them wait.  The mother finally concedes, and we cut straight to a wedding ceremony.

Following the ceremony, we’re treated to a hilarious and foreboding scene in which Hassan and Bahar, on their nuptial mattress, are attempting to consummate the marriage but are rudely and crudely interrupted by the drunk and belligerent Osman at the window.  He shouts ceaselessly, encouraging the new couple to procreate quickly and repeatedly, and insists Bahar promise to give him a boy, a strong nephew to help in the fields.  At one point Hassan gets so fed up he moves a dresser in front of the window.

Following the wedding, we cut right back to the primary vehicle for this films message.  The brothers have immediately put Bahar to work along side them in the fields.  Osman, being the older brother, feels that because the spring they get their irrigation water from is on their land, they should be allowed to control it’s flow and also it’s recipients.  He proposes they block off the water leading to the other villagers land, irrigate their own land first, and let the others have what’s left.

Hassan disagrees, saying he believes no good will come of it but he must obey, because Osman is the elder, and must be obeyed.

Things quickly go wrong.

The villagers soon start scheming on how to get their water, and how, since the water is the earth’s blood, it belongs to everyone, regardless of where it’s source is located.  And, as you might imagine, things get violent.

It would be impossible to discuss this film without also discussing animal violence.  This film contains some of the most brutal animal violence I have seen on celluloid.  In modern cinema, it’s easy to tolerate portrayals of violence done to animals because it’s faked using animatronics or computer graphics.  In this case, however, it is very harsh and very real, and very difficult to watch.  I do understand that this film was made in a different time and in a different place, where animals were not held in the esteem they are now, here in the United States, at least.  I did my best to not let it detract from my involvement in the film.

Viewing difficulties aside, the violence, when viewed in context, serves as an excellent vehicle for foreshadowing, and as a metaphor for the varying degrees of respect put on human life by other humans.

It’s not long before there’s an altercation involving firearms, and Osman, being the elder and wiser, convinces Hassan to take the heat for crimes committed.

Hassan gets sent off to prison, and we enter the third act, where the films message is exposed at the forefront.  Osman, a widower, becomes obsessed with his younger brother’s beautiful wife, filling his nights with stolen views through broken wood slats into Bahar’s bedroom, and filling his days with obvious attempts at lechery.  He even begins to slick his hair back and swirl his moustache up in an effort to impress his sister-in-law.

Osman’s desire and obsession takes complete control, and he betrays his younger brother again and again in his pursuit of forbidden love.

The most remarkable scene of the film takes place here.  While working in the fields and walking through some deep irrigation, Bahar’s calf is bitten by a snake, and Osman rushes to the rescue.  He pulls Bahar’s leg up out of the water, pulling her skirt up further than necessary, and just when you think he’s going to cross a line he starts to suck the poison from the wound.  Bahar cries in anguish, and, although completely unresponsive to Osman’s advances until now, starts to show confusion and fear.  Confusion for the tenderness she’s being shown, and fear that she may succumb.   The snake in the water is an apt metaphor indeed.

This film is about passion and desire, and about the animal that resides just beneath the skin of every human being that can rear it’s ugly head at any time, and for many small and strange reasons.

It’s about the sense of ownership people exert over all things around them: their land, their family, their home and their country.

It’s about the ease of corruptibility of humanity when greed and lust permeate the soul.

It’s one of the best portrayals of all these themes as I’ve ever seen.  It’s a remarkable film, and you can watch it at the Auteurs, for free, until the end of May.

But I need not tell you, Martin Scorcese, for all this you already know.

Thank you again, Martin Scorcese.

Signed, with much love and sincerity,

A fellow cinephile.

Image via the World Cinema Foundation