Ghosts
On one day in Istanbul, four lives overlap in Azra Deniz Okyay’s award-winning debut as writer-director.
Since I found it difficult to respond positively to this film, a debut work by the Turkish filmmaker Azra Deniz Okyay, I should in fairness stress at the outset that it has won a clutch of awards. Some of these came on home ground in the 2020 film festival at Antilaya, but it also won prizes in Thessaloniki, Venice and Warsaw. Consequently, my reaction may be a matter of personal taste. It's certainly the case that all of the players in it are persuasive giving convincing portrayals of ordinary folk seen during a single day in Istanbul, but Okyay's approach to storytelling is one that I found frustrating.
Ghosts is a film with four central characters. In the course of the film their paths do cross on occasion but each of them is given an individual narrative thread. The strongest of these concerns Iffet (Nalan Kuruçim) who is desperately seeking money to help her son who, innocent in her eyes, is in jail awaiting trial. She is a principled woman but this need threatens to involve her in unlawful behaviour after other attempts to raise cash have failed. A younger woman, Didem (Dilayda Günes) is a neighbour of hers who is bad at keeping a job and really wants to devote herself to dance as both teacher and performer. Another woman, Ela (Beril Kayar) is also artistic and very much a feminist activist. Meanwhile, the most significant male seen is Resit (Emrah Ozdemir) whose dealings in renting out properties and aiding unscrupulous developers define his character.
This is material that could have been laid out and developed clearly thereby involving us in the tales. But instead Okyay chooses to jump around between these plot threads, favours excessive camera movement and quick editing and consequently makes it harder to be caught up in these lives. It is all too typical that when Didem's family including a sister appear they remain ill-defined as individuals. Later on the infidelity of Didem's boyfriend (Baran Çakmak) will suddenly become prominent, but it lacks weight because Okyay doesn't take the time to allow us to know her characters well enough to feel for them (Iffet is the one who comes closest to that).
Okyay might defend her film by saying that what she wanted to do was not to tell stories but to present a social mosaic. It is true that what Ghosts does achieve is to evoke a city in which people struggle to survive while being oppressed by the authorities. The day in question is one in which Istanbul is suffering from a power cut which will be blamed on terrorists but which suggests incompetence while at the same time allowing those in charge to make rules about public behaviour. Indeed, this can also be seen as a metaphor for a wider state of things that persists as exemplified by the promotion on television of the availability of new and better housing indicative of a prosperous Turkey. Ghosts shows us that this bears no resemblance to the experience of those whose lives are featured here and even more so when it comes to Syrian refugees in the city whose exploitation is glimpsed more than once.
Ghosts raises these issues but chooses to do so through a series of impressions when what we want (or what I want at least) is a work that has time to present its characters in depth and as part of a narrative that flows. Instead, we go from person to person, from dance contest to street protest, from shots that fill the screen to smaller video images inserted for no clear reason. This is a film with a rebellious spirit that one can approve, but its chosen style was one that irritated me throughout.
Original title: Hayaletler.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Dilayda Günes, Nalan Kuruçim, Beril Kayar, Emrah Ozdemir, Ekin Arabas, Baran Çakmak, Mehmet Emin Önal.
Dir Azra Deniz Okyay, Pro Dilek Aydin, Screenplay Azra Deniz Okyay, Ph Baris Özbiçer, Art Dir Erdinc Akturk, Ed Ayris Alptekin, Music Ekin Uzeltuzenci.
Heimatlos Films/MPM Film-Mubi.
83 mins. Turkey/France/Qatar. 2020. Rel: 17 April 2021. Available on Mubi. No Cert.