Derviş Aydın Akkoç*
Cem Yılmaz’s latest film, “Do Not Disturb,” can be compared in terms of both caliber and common problems to “Anayurt Oteli,” which Ömer Kavur adapted from Yusuf Atılgan’s novel. What is meant here is not a similarity or contrast relationship that can be established between the exceptional performance by Macit Koper, who brought life to the hotel clerk Zebercet in “Anayurt Oteli,” and the “night manager” Ayzek Metin, portrayed by Cem Yılmaz with incredible acting. Instead, it is a critical and still unresolved issue that both films bring to the forefront from aesthetic and political perspectives: the problem of individualization and the processes of communication or alienation related to this core problem.
The “hotel” as a space between home and homelessness is already an allegorical image; Edip Cansever described hotels as “the great coffins of big cities.” The hotel is a milieu of confinement not only in Yusuf Atılgan’s work but also in Edip Cansever’s: “I apologize, world, / I cannot leave this hotel.” These large and small coffins that cannot be left, yet cannot be fully inhabited, lacking in light, often dim, are quite rich in terms of allegorical expression: the country as a hotel, society as a hotel, family as a hotel, even time as a hotel… Ömer Kavur, who was closely connected to Yusuf Atılgan’s text, problematized his own hotel ownership as a kind of allegory for a republic or a national allegory; Zebercet, a premature product, represented Turkey’s yet-to-be-formed, unfinished citizen identity. Cem Yılmaz’s hotel ownership is much closer to the image of “society as a hotel”; directionless, deficient in self-expression, a strange and flawed citizen figure, Ayzek Metin, and the social structure revolving around him…
Alegoric forms of expression used to create a country panorama are mostly set in rural areas in cinema; of course, the countryside has been neglected and quite worn out by now; Cem Yılmaz also creates a panorama, but in terms of allegorical symbolic expression, he focuses on the city, a limited unit of the city (the hotel), and a few streets. However, as in allegorical productions centered around rural areas, bureaucrats – important figures such as the district governor, prosecutor, or mayor – are not included in the frame: hotel guests, like the employees, are generally actors who wander in the cracks of the social structure, unable to find their place, incomplete, strange, neither fully alive nor entirely ghostly; even the literature professor who constantly rehearses suicide attempts is part of this social circle, a melancholic character who has fallen from grace from top to bottom…
The hotel is an inheritance for Zebercet, and he is wealthy; Ayzek Metin, on the other hand, is truly penniless, and his poverty is a sign of his rootlessness; his problem is not the inability to leave the hotel but rather not having been able to enter it yet. Unemployment is a kind of civil death in itself, and finding a job is an entry visa into the social world that one is on the outskirts of; Ayzek Metin’s hotel clerk position is hanging by a thread; whether he will continue to work depends on the “probation period.” From an external perspective, Ayzek Metin is a character with a stable life, poverty, and ordinary existence, but Cem Yılmaz is aware that there is a small tyrant waiting in the inner world of every stable character: Ayzek Metin is somewhat eerie even in his most dramatic moments; behind his innocence, a cunningness sometimes shines, which, if not evil, gives the green light to some misdeeds, such as sending unpleasant messages to Professor Bahtiyar’s wife during a moment of losing himself, not cursing but sending a poop emoji. In the end, evil is also a matter of power, and Ayzek Metin occupies the lower regions of this power hierarchy, with only small-scale misdeeds to plan or commit. Social evils are a sum or intensified form of these small-scale misdeeds in some way; shortly after, at dawn, a man who will shoot a woman in the middle of the street – Davut Bey – for example, until before the action, he is considered a “good man,” armed and helmeted but fatherly, generous, sincere, with only one fault, “loving like crazy.”
Speaking of love: the inability to become an individual and the resulting communication and alienation problems are tangled in a general issue of love, or rather, lack of love, in Cem Yılmaz’s work. Just like Zebercet, Ayzek Metin also “needs a humane warmth.” However, this naive need has become much more complex today: “being understood” or “wanting to be loved” are two separate poles, two separate desires that exclude each other: “you want to be loved.” Sometimes it’s about wanting to be loved, sometimes about wanting to be understood, or both at the same time… However, in “Do Not Disturb,” no one actually loves or understands anyone, and at best, everyone tolerates each other… Society has failed, and the shabbiness of the hotel is the same as the shabbiness of society. In Ayzet Metin’s fragmented consciousness, occasionally, an image of a luxurious, well-kept, and transparent hotel appears, but this image is immediately replaced by the usual shabbiness: lack of love and the accompanying lack of understanding have ruined societal existence. On the other hand, a different and more fundamental desire that cuts through these poles has emerged, now through social media: “wanting to be liked.” It is as if the final nail is hammered into the existence of those trapped in the hotel: to be liked.
And humor… Cem Yılmaz’s democratic humor is accompanied by a melancholic cloud – in a positive sense: this cloud has refined and intensified humor without compromising its democratic nature. The atmosphere of the film is misty and damp; cell phones are new, but the cars on the street are old models; an unattainable, irreplaceable past clings to the present, a sticky mood has pervaded everything, from the position of objects to the appearance of characters, even their gestures and facial expressions: as sharpness intensifies, it flirts with melancholy.
In this melancholic vibration, Ayzek Metin’s upper front teeth have had their “impressions taken” but have still not been made: the character speaks with a shadow in the middle of his mouth and occasionally smiles. This is a clear expression of the qualitative transformation in Cem Yılmaz’s humor: laughing with a mouth that is not adorned with pearl-like teeth but with an embarrassed smile that seeks to hide, a mouth that does not want to reveal its insides with a simple gesture… “Do Not Disturb” is a type of dark comedy: a genre where laughter is a creepy, wild, and even archaic activity. From this perspective, those who set out to harvest laughter without problems and effortlessly will return empty-handed from “Do Not Disturb.” The shadow in the character’s mouth, that bottomless void, also serves a function in problematizing humor: it disturbs, and laughing becomes an act that catches the subject itself red-handed.
It is customary to consider laughing or humor as a predominantly anti-authoritarian act: laughter is a practice that nullifies authority figures. Of course, there is some validity to this view, but humor or laughter is not only about this political aspect, as there is also an anthropological aspect to the matter. In this regard, Elias Canetti argued in “Crowds and Power” that the only laughing animal outside of humans is the hyena. He claimed that laughing is primarily related to the pleasure of prey falling to the ground, and that laughter arises from this pleasure, from the thrill of knowing that the prey will soon be captured. Cem Yılmaz’s humor transformations seem to be open to discussion on this anthropological level. In “Do Not Disturb,” something haunts the desire to laugh, sometimes suppressing it, sometimes allowing it to erupt, something that disturbs: can this be a grin, the great harasser of an ostensibly innocent and harmless laughter? By positioning himself on the fine and precarious border between laughter and a smirk, Cem Yılmaz, while reinventing himself, seems unafraid to deliberately disappoint and challenge his already established tracks and surroundings… In accordance with Ece Ayhan’s term “society of malice,” it seems that hidden or openly malicious grins will also emerge as part of this laugh-out-loud practice: for instance, without any provocation, in passing, Ayzek Metin says, “I’m talking about immigrants, I’m not saying anything else, I’m stopping.” He is really just stopping, but right where he stops, or a little further, in the very place where a sewer pipe could burst at any moment, there are wicked smirks…
Comparing “Do Not Disturb,” with its standout performances by characters such as the alcoholic pharmacist Saniye Hanım, the personal development expert Peri Kadın, or the laundry woman, as well as the environmental types like the drug dealer and the trans character, to “Anayurt Oteli” alone would certainly be unfair. After all, there is a long line that began with “Her Şey Çok Güzel Olacak” and continued with “Hokkabaz.” Evaluating this line within its own continuities and ruptures, making its transformations visible, is the task of experienced film critics. The intuition of an amateur viewer inclined towards action and crime can only lead to one conclusion: there is a Cem Yılmaz cinema in this country…
This article was originally published in Birikim Magazine on October 1, 2023 in Turkish and translated into English by Politurco.
*Derviş Aydın Akkoç is a Turkish author and a columnist for Birikim Magazine.
