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UNSUBTITLED 2020

This year has gone by, and is still going by, like a film that haunts you. We can’t say that we’re out of the woods yet. It’s not over and we are still in the middle of it. Rather than any one individual or thing, the film’s heroes are all of us. How much longer will it continue to haunt us? Stay optimistic until we see it off...

TEXT BY SELİN GÜREL 

ARTWORK BY M. FLORINE DÉMOSTHÈNE

 

    In films driven by paranoid characters, there is often a single, memorable moment in which the their paranoia becomes flesh and bone. The imminent catastrophe she screamed about, while soaked with sweat - but could not make anyone believe in - finally arrives and turns up at the door. The muscles on her face relax for the first time since the movie began. She cannot suppress the pride of having been right all along, cannot help but show it off to the rest of us. Suddenly, she turns into a happy, but slightly malicious creature. She is that main character whom we have difficulty loving, who, from the beginning of the film, carries on her shoulders the world in which she wants the viewer to also believe. She is the one who stumbles here and there - and who, in the end, unburdens her load at our feet. A frenetic babbler, whose destiny we don’t really care about... How did it happen that her story, which we barely bothered to touch with the tips of our fingers, slowly enveloped all of our being? How did it happen that suddenly we were not able to think of anything else, besides her?

    Like every story in which all of the characters suffer from the same troubles, once you zoom out from the unnecessary details, what you are left with is an apocalyptic feeling of fright that never falls out of fashion. You anticipate the ending that is just around the corner, the prospect of an exit, the hope of salvation... It is not even important how things end, as long as, while we are on this path, we escape from our own ordinary lives for a bit. There is no doubt that our film has achieved this, but it has almost gone too far, enough to be declared presumptuous. Presumptuous, vindictive and tactless. It feels as if a beautiful dream has been interrupted. In truth, there was no beautiful dream, but it still hurts. You know the feeling you get when something or someone wakes you up and you want to put them in their place? But this time it is the film that is nudging you awake and you are helpless. If we hadn’t seen it, it would certainly have been for the better - after all, our lives never seem to go anywhere. But then, we would never have learnt what we would miss, or how we would escape from this.

    It would have been comforting to define this experience as a ‘guilty pleasure’ except that it is simply not possible. We have accepted our fate, held onto some piece of it and cannot derive pleasure from considering it in a happier light. Quite the opposite... We should be angry about the dullness of our newfound reality so that we do not get used to it. We should not settle for the bare minimum, nor disavow our memories of more light hearted films. As people who hold cinema in high esteem, we owe that much to this art. We said that we had been looking at this experience from an optimistic angle and we will surely emerge from it having learnt something. We can’t say that we’re out of the woods yet. It’s not over, we are still in the middle of it. It will continue to haunt us for a little while longer, but once everything is over, and we say goodbye to the last scene, we will notice that we are looking at other episodes of our lives differently. We will still remember this story from time to time, including all of its absurd moments, as our paths keep intersecting with this narrative that insists on its reality. For example, we will remember which theatre we saw it in, as well as which clothes we had on at the time.

    For a while, it will keep popping up everywhere, but my guess is that it will not age well. Those who are not yet born will not understand why we talked and wrote about this film so much. We will not be able to explain our troubles to them, because they will not understand us. After a while, we will forget it, too, but of course only until we see another film that resembles it. Then everything will start all over again.