Belonging (2019, Burak Çevik) (Patreon)

70/100

Another ND/NF selection, currently without a U.S. distributor. If I were to sit down and try to name my ten favorite pure ideas for a movie (not gonna happen, too difficult, don't ask), Belonging would surely be in the running. Indeed, this Turkish family-memoir-of-sorts, which interrogates a truly pointless murder provoked and abetted by writer-director Burak Çevik's aunt, is so conceptually brilliant that it has no trouble surviving somewhat pedestrian execution (in its lengthier second section; opening 25 minutes are perfect), though I dream of what might have been were Çevik a peak-Farhadi-level dramaturge.

No actors show up for a good long while, though. First movement consists entirely of uninflected, Benning-esque landscape shots, accompanied by a nonstop first-person male voiceover describing, in almost obsessive detail, all of the events leading up to (plus some of the events immediately following) the murder. There's no express indication that we're hearing the killer's police statement, though it's hard to conclude otherwise given this voice's impassive, metronomic recitation of appalling decisions and grotesque acts, related in the same casual way that you'd recall having visited a museum and eaten lunch with a friend last week. In fact, there's no contextualization at all, really, which just makes the whole thing creepier. Only a brief prologue in which Çevik speaks directly to his aunt, without even identifying her as such, alludes to any personal connection. The images, meanwhile, suggest a tranquil world unconscious of its impending violation.

After 25 minutes of this, I'd confidently assumed that the movie (which runs a mere 72) would just continue in the same vein throughout. It does not. The remainder dramatizes what we've just heard—but only a tiny, relatively insignificant fraction of it. Maybe the first 45 seconds. The part you'd kinda forgotten about by this point, because it was all but meaningless. The part during which nothing of consequence happens, concluding at a moment when it was entirely possible, even likely, that nothing of consequence ever would happen. It's as if Double Indemnity consisted of Walter Neff flatly relating the entire narrative in voiceover, accompanied by evocative shots of downtown Los Angeles (devoid of humanity), and then the rest of the movie consisted exclusively of Neff's first visit to the Dietrichson home...except in this version Phyllis tells him they've decided to cancel the policy and he reluctantly accepts that decision, so in theory they won't ever meet again. We already know what happens subsequently, from Neff's own mouth, but the film doesn't even come close to even getting close to even getting just a little close to getting there. 

A mediocre filmmaker would have made sure to plant seeds of the future crime in this lengthy meet-cute—hints of the ugly direction their relationship would take. Or, alternatively, created a blissful Before Sunrise-style encounter, for maximum irony. Çevik, to his enormous credit, does neither. If anything, he errs too hard on the side of the mundane, then gets nervous and starts throwing in cheap and not terribly effective stabs at fleeting transcendence: a described dream (ugh), an entire poem (actually written by Çevik's aunt, I suspect) read aloud. Can't blame the actors—they both do excellent, unfussy work, declining to foreshadow a damn thing. I just wanted something a bit richer from this empathetic imagined encounter. Some intangible quality that I'd have difficulty communicating in words. Çevik tries for that, but he doesn't quite achieve it.

At the same time, though, the failure itself is somehow moving. Impotence and incomprehension lurk beneath every frame. This isn't so much a film as it is a weirdly prosaic exorcism. See it if you can.