Authors
Dr. Ercan Kesal (Yeditepe University, Department of Anthropology) (1959), Avanos – Nevşehir. [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik (Yeditepe University, Department of Sociology) (1968). Istanbul. [email protected]
Abstract
This essay considers the film 3 Monkeys directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is about the social and personal relations in the age of the “post-modern,” showing the fragmentations individuals face in their lives. As such, the film weaves together personal, local and political themes in a handsome fashion at the age of globalization, since the themes outlined that have a particular connotation in the Turkish case can be found elsewhere. Trapped in the web of failures and wretched relationships, the title speaks to the themes in the film—the characters find the solution in playing the three monkeys: hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.
Keywords
Social and political change; family and family relations in Turkey; sexuality and hegemonic masculinity; internal migration; social (in)justice and inequality.
3 Monkeys: Understanding Change in Turkey through a Film
Filmed in 2008, 3 Monkeys is based on the screenplay written in 2007. It won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival, as a joint production of Turkey, Italy, and France. As such, the film is regarded as an important piece that opened up a new turn in the cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Each character represents a milestone in the greater narrative of the art work, contributing to the overall narration of the major themes such as internal migration, social justice and inequality, hegemonic masculinity, and ill-defined sexuality. The present article scrutinizes these themes in relation to the changing social and political contexts in Turkey in the 2000s.
The story can be summarized as follows: Servet Gündüz, a businessman who is about to enter politics, hits and runs a ranger, as he is on his way to his villa located at the margins of the city. Out of fright, he hides himself in the woods. A passer-by car with a husband-wife and a child leaves away, pretending that they have seen nothing. Afraid of helping a wounded man lying in the middle of the road, the family is emblematic of the introverted, selfish, and obsessive type, which developed in the last few decades in Turkey. Thinking that his possible arrest will influence his candidacy, Servet, on the other hand, asks Eyüp, his private chauffeur to assume the guilt and he offers a considerable amount of money for compensation. Eyüp accepts the offer with the expectations that it will provide a basis for establishing a possible job in the future.
Eyüp and his family, uprooted from the village, are now dislocated at the very margins of Istanbul, by the old city walls. Having left their home and migrated to Istanbul, they are representatives of many other thousands in the low-income neighborhoods, living in a gecekondu—a squatter settlement. Therefore, Eyüp sees Servet’s offer as the last opportunity to hang onto life and to survive in the city. All in all, the family represents the palimpsest of images of a migrant family: the only child İsmail is a high-school graduate who could not pass the university exam. He is now a member of a mass of youngsters with no job, training, or profession. He is also a part of the youth that has a potential for crime, who could commit any sort of felony, with the expectations that he could have a short cut in life.
Servet, on the other hand, is frustrated because he lost the election to become the party representative to run for the national elections. This meant for him to lose his power as well, as he started to bemoan his case. He needs a new excitement, a new ardor that will cure his self-lamentation. Although married with a child, he turns to the nearest possible and convenient object of his desire—Hacer, the wife of Eyüp. Aware of her passionate dreams cannot be realized by Eyüp, Hacer hangs onto Servet with a morbid passion. Servet also plays a key role for İsmail, who sees him as his way out from the life he leads. For this reason, he even pretends that he did not eyewitness Servet and Hacer’s lovemaking. The fine balance of the story is disturbed by the release of Eyüp from the prison. Servet, this time too, out of fright, ends his relationship with Hacer, despite her incessant begging. İsmail, loyal to his father and ambivalent to Servet’s “deeds,” ends up with killing him. A family tragedy begins to loom again—Eyüp, who lost a son before, will not lose a child again. The idea of getting into prison in lieu of his son passes through his mind. Yet, as a man who learnt his lesson well, he finds an errand boy at the coffee shop to get into jail on his son’s behalf. The narrative of “corrupted legal” system creates a loop—Eyüp offers the money which he received from Servet to the young boy.
The film engages with the emergent social and cultural issues in Turkey in the 2000s. The internal migration which started in the 1950’s has reached to an accelerated speed; and until now, it has created “new” forms of identities—i.e. fellow-townsmanships in the middle of the metropolis—as people from Sivas, Erzincan, Giresun and the like schooled together in ghettos. They were first treated as “invisible,” later on as objects of cheap urban labor. As a member of such a group, the Öztürk family—who could be the any and every “true” Turkish migrant family in the city—discovers that they have no chance of claiming a space in Istanbul unless they play the 3 monkeys. Beyond this personal, family level, the film can also be analyzed in the larger framework of the social, cultural, and political transformation from a 650-year empire to a young republic, with the ambition of creating a “modern,” “westernized” and “progressed” nation-state, albeit with a failed implementation. Within this understanding, the film also significant of telling the attempts of multi-party system that Turkey witnessed since the mid 1940s. However, hidden in the story is the understanding of a failed democracy and the inner-party politics, at best embodied in the story of Servet, a representative of political corruption and social decay; at worst, in the story of Eyüp, a representative of patience and perseverance. Servet and Eyüp are the opposite poles, in that respect.
Those who were able to take the advantage of the political turn, now live in gated communities—in homes with a garden and pool, choosing to lead a sterile, hygiene, socially and culturally isolated life in different margins of the city. It is a process of “othering” the other and the “self” at the same time, as the other “others” are still in the old margins of the urban. However, interestingly enough, both the gecekondu and the gated communities are two but different places of déplacement in a way. While gecekondu is a site of an involuntary segregation, isolation, and insulation, the gated communities are sites of new urban marginality, marked by social exclusion and tension. As such, they are the new forms of urban wealth and poverty.
Most of analyses regarding text can be read through the character of Hacer, whose character is prone to be interpreted as a “guinea pig,” representing all sources of evil and the ill. She is, however, the loneliest, most desperate, and most beaten up character in the movie. Her will does not have any value. She represents a woman whose opinions do not matter. She is not even asked or being listened to. For Servet, his living in a “gated community” is not different from being with Hacer as “object of desire.” Same is true of his desire to become a parliament member and to have Hacer as well.
However, the “qualities” Servet has are neither particularly peculiar to him nor to the people from his class. They are the results of the capitalistic system that is imposed on people in general. Hacer’s “following the suit” is also exemplary of using the system. She sees her relationship with Servet as a key to power, just like the same way Eyüp assumes guilt for a “short-cut.” Eyüp, whose sexuality is ill-formed and performed, refrains from asking the opinion of his wife even at a vital turn in their life. Servet, who had the right to chose or decline Hacer, leaves no option for her when he says “it is up to here, everybody minds his/her business.” However, it is Hacer who follows her dreams, passions, even her utopias, in the midst of chaos, trying to make her family stand on their feet, despite all the pessimism she experiences.
All characters in the movie, nonetheless, are both victims and the guilty. These polar roles are so embedded that it is almost next to impossible to tell which one of them represents the good or the bad. Family, honor, and integrity, which are to be treated with sanctity, have been subjected to profanation. Each character tries to dominate each other, trying to have control over each other’s feelings. On the other hand, having no control over the total situation, the best option seems to pretend and play the 3 monkeys.
Themes of both power and masculinity are the determinant axes of the story—as hegemonic masculinity oppress men and women alike. Hegemonic masculinity takes the form of power and it is embodied in most of the male characters, but in different ways: masculinity oppresses women and men, as men also become the perpetrators of it. On the other hand, having power, or even longing for it—social, economic, sexual or otherwise—is more obvious with every character. The power-hungry Servet loses candidacy in his party’s elections; obsessed with Servet and pushed away by her unrequited love, Hacer loses him and her husband at once; deprived of his manliness, Eyüp loses his family; without a job and hope, İsmail is already lost and literally “beaten up” in the metropolis. And the last guinea pig is Bayram, the errand boy at the coffee shop, a recent migrant to Istanbul, and an orphan with no parents. Eyüp picks and chooses him as the next “victim”—as the one at the very bottom of the social ladder, who by now, is convinced that assuming someone else’s guilt can be approved by jurisdiction, the guilty himself, and the society all at once. If Eyüp was able to take the guilt that his boss committed, then he can find someone else to take over the guilt for Ismail’s crime. The handicaps of the legal system in Turkey have exhausted juridical model, as the powerful subjects became the rule of the day, causing the subalterns have a non-belief in justice. As a result, illegal and unlawful applications have become naturalized, legitimated, and sustained. A concept such as “blood money” which has no place in modern law is now proved to verify itself in the so-called contemporary Turkey, causing those innocent ones to assume the opposite position in exchange of an amount of money, which is barely enough to lead an honorable life.
The film is also open to fertile psychological interpretations. When we look at the concepts such as guilt, feelings of guilt, redemption, and double-crossing, these ideas are presented in an unusual way. Rather than giving the “natural” predictable first implications, the less known, or less predictable ways are presented to show these feelings. Think about young İsmail who catches his mother with her lover. The first thing to do might have been to kill them. But, instead he runs away. Eyüp finds out about the situation. The first thing comes to the mind is to punish his wife. But, instead, he pretends that he does know.
Visually, too, this creates almost a “disturbing” screening for the viewer, making one ask constant questions, while experiencing a kind of “popular nostalgia” which evokes a lost and idealized world, that cannot be regained, which can only be contrasted with the discontents of the “prosperous” present world. This past is concrete in the private and private (home, family, and marriage) sphere and well as in the public (politics, law, and everyday participation of the individuals).
Aesthetically speaking, the close-ups emphasize that “life” should be experienced first hand. In the light of the narration; there is a laden criticism of the post-1990 Turkey, which is symbolized through “sweat.” Simply put, sweat is an excretion which is peculiar to human beings and animals that react to the situation of being caged, prisoned, or frightened. Just like the animals who were frightened, the characters in the film. For this reason, sweat becomes a symbol of fear in the film. Last, but not least, there is a “colorful” play with emotions: at the beginning of the film, driving into the dark, with only headlights shown, shows Servet’s dark soul (despite the meaning of his last name as “day” or “daylight”; his dark office is a symbol of the dark side of the politics, and perhaps himself. The past, which is symbolized through the yellowish tone, almost stands for an image of an old photograph. The yellowish tone eventually lightens up creating the most vivid, yet the bitterest reality in the present.
Considered as such, the film weaves together personal, local and political themes in a handsome fashion at the age of globalization, since the themes outlined that have a particular connotation in the Turkish case can also be found elsewhere. At the finale, we face Servet in a gecekondu building which is about to collapse, as he looks afar into the sea with despair. It is in a relentlessly material world that they have to end up with living. The final scene is what sums up the family’s dangerous play of the 3 monkeys, i.e. hear no evil (Eyüp, an eavesdropper his wife’s phone calls), speak no evil (Eyüp, İsmail, and Hacer never talking to each other), see no evil (İsmail seeing his mother Hacer in flagrante delicto yet keeping silence). A dark, suffocating, and a rainy day is about to blanket Istanbul. In fact, silence, gloominess, and a yellowish-darkness accompany the most significant themes in the movie since the beginning.