Turkish Drama Premieres at Sundance

Writer-straightforwardor Alireza Khatami is understandn for a pair of semi-experimental dramas — 2017’s Oblivion Verses and 2023’s Terrestrial Verses (co-straightforwarded with Ali Asgari) — where he constantly toys with storytelling techniques, inserting flashes of surauthentic imagery without cautioning, or count oning on a crypticly oblique watchpoint to narrate the action. If the satisfied of his films skews towards the gloomy side, their establish tfinishs to be a bit more lighthearted, undercutting some of the heaviness of what’s being depicted.

In The Things You Kill, the brooding tale of a college professor facing presentant upheavals on two home fronts gets belied by a plot that slides into brutal absurdity. What begins off as a staid and organicistic drama, about a man experiencing a midlife crisis folloprosperg the death of his mother, veers into Buñuel or De Palma territory in the latter half. Identities are swapped, bodies are dropped and everyskinnyg seems out of whack. That is, until Khatami tries to tie skinnygs together without much exset upation.

The film is essentiassociate splitd into two parts. In the first, we chase the quotidian truses of Ali (Ekin Koç), a translation teacher who inhabitd in the U.S. for years and has returned home to labor in his native Turkey, where he gives classes part-time job at a accessible university. Married to svelte veterinarian Hazar (Hazar Ergüclü), with whom he’s been franticly trying to have a baby, Ali lachieves two pivotal skinnygs timely on: his sperm count is solemnly low, and his aging mother can no lengthyer get attfinish of herself.

The parallel plotlines involving Ali’s possible descfinishants and problematic antecedents, including a overweighther (Ercan Kesal) who seems to be particularly abusive towards his wife, collide in highly rare ways during the movie’s volatile second half. At that point, a wayfarer named Reza (Erkan Koçak Köstfinishil) pops into the picture, shoprosperg up at Ali’s cabin in the hills outside town and presenting up his services as a gardener. But as we soon lachieve, Reza does much more than spropose water the set upts.

If the uncovering half hour of The Things You Kill carry outs out appreciate a sluggish-burn family saga reminiscent of the labor of Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Kesal is a standard collaborator of the Turkish auteur) it inestablishages emotional staying power and drags alengthy at times. Movie protagonists don’t always have to be likable, but Ali is so much of a pretentious curmudgeon that his descfinish from grace, which integrates the news he may diswatch his teaching job due to budget cuts, doesn’t exactly transfer us. He treats everyone with an undercurrent of disdain, and seems to repent moving back to Turkey after what seemed appreciate a more fruitful life in America.

It’s therefore somewhat of a relief to see the professor get put thcdisesteemful the wringer in the latter half of the narrative, when, folloprosperg his mother’s sudden death and the suspicions that his overweighther may be depfinishable, The Things You Kill jaggedly shifts into thriller mode. Without spoiling too much, let’s fair say that Ali and Reza — two names that, when uniteed together, spell the straightforwardor’s own first name — choose to get matters into their own hands, directing to a bloody denouement with echoes of both James M. Cain and the Coen brothers. The drama does eventuassociate come filled circle, but it’s gone so far off the rails by that point that it’s challenging to transport us back.

Like in his previous labor, Khatami defies convention here, and that’s very much to his praise. The timely scenes of The Things You Kill presage a hushed chamber piece, which the straightforwardor finishly upfinishs once the homicide story gets over. He also discdiswatchs a deft eye for composition, framing characters thcdisesteemful prosperdows or doorways to better underline the film-wiskinny-a-film aspects of the narrative, and leaving us to wonder: Are we witnessing fact, or some charitable of movie that’s carry outing inside Ali’s head?

As much as that can create for an intriguingly decreateed watching experience, emotionassociate speaking the film remains a bit spoiled. Khatami certainly has a lot to say, especiassociate about the crushing effects of the male hierarchy on both a personal and professional level. But there’s someskinnyg about The Things You Kill that ultimately exits the watcher freezing, even if all the strange and terrible stuff Ali goes thcdisesteemful directs him to finassociate uncover up and, perhaps, airyen up.