Debuting writer-director Murat Fıratoğlu’s meditative slow-burn “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies” starts with a row of (mostly) men while they are at halay, a popular Turkish folk dance commonly performed at celebrations like weddings — not by professional dancers necessarily, but by the guests themselves. There is much symmetry, and a specific yet simple foot movement one has to master in a rhythmic circle, a routine you engage in harmoniously alongside people you might not even know all that well.
It takes a little guesswork to gauge what this opening (and later, bookending) halay number might symbolize across the often austere “Hemme,” a prizewinner in last year’s Venice Horizons program that has been selected as Turkey’s Best International Feature Oscar submission in the upcoming awards season. But given both the film’s protagonist (gig worker Eyüp, played by the director) and title character (Eyüp’s greedy boss) are participants in the dance, this Turkish writer can’t help but see it as a biting social statement. While these two men are made to be fun-loving equals in a dance that would fall apart at the slightest sign of individual ego or showmanship, they are anything but equals in real life.
How can they be in world that never sides with financially oppressed people like Eyüp? Life hasn’t been kind to this debt-ridden man, forced by bankruptcy to move to his hometown, Siverek, from the seaside riches of İzmir. In his Kurdish-majority town (equidistant from large cities Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır, also with large Kurdish populations), Eyüp works at a tomato harvesting farm, gathering and salting heaps of the crimson fruit under the baking sun. In a film that is often richly photographed despite a modest budget, the enormous grounds filled with bright red tomatoes feel like clever visual shortcuts to cinematic meaning. No blood has to be spilled for “Hemme” to communicate notions like red-hot rage and revenge to the audience.
In due course, rage and revenge become the driving emotions for Eyüp, at least for a while, when the foreman refuses to pay him what he’s earned. A fight breaks out to no favorable outcome for Eyüp, and he leaves the scene on his raggedy motorcycle, taking a mini-journey to plot his boss’s death. But “Hemme” never quite takes off as a traditional revenge thriller, and nor we expect it to, thanks to the careful tone Fıratoğlu establishes throughout. A former attorney now in his forties, it’s clear the filmmaker-star has witnessed many a disagreement and feud over the course of his career — enough to turn his writerly sights towards something more introspective than a straightforward tale of vengeance, exploring the depths of the complicated human soul.
That ambition, along with an observant documentary aesthetic, gradually transforms “Hemme” into a distant relative of an Abbas Kiarostami picture, with plenty of visual cues that echo the Iranian master’s work. A lone tree brings to mind Kiarostami’s 1997 movie “Taste of Cherry,” while the lengthy, life-affirming monologues delivered by an array of single-scene characters (including a young woman who might be a former romantic interest) feel like verbal arias we became acquainted with across works such as “Like Someone In Love.”
If Fıratoğlu can’t seize the vast emotions that those movies do, that may be because his minimalist writing errs on the side of sparseness. His static, often distant camera has a trace of coldness to it too. On the one hand, that distance produces layered images that contextualize his characters within their surroundings — we see both the beautifully pastoral in the Southeastern regions of Turkey, and the ugly urbanization that disturbs the idyllic picture. On the other, it keeps the audience at arm’s length from the intimacy of the performances.
In another odd choice, Fıratoğlu ignores the language varieties spoken in the region where the film is set, Kurdish being the primary one. (In at least one interview, he cites the lack of pre-production time required to study and portray the Kurdish language accurately as a reason for shooting the film entirely in Turkish.) This omission puts a dent in a film that otherwise feels rooted in the reality of a specific locale and culture.
Still, there is something adventurous, even promising, about a new Turkish filmmaker attempting something that feels sure-handedly situated within longstanding cinematic traditions, and doing so with his close circle of friends and family (many of whom are in the cast or have assumed other roles). What “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies” lacks in budgetary means, it often makes up through the sharp intentions of Fıratoğlu, a thoughtful filmmaker we will hear from again on the international festival circuit.
