What is the gist behind the film being termed ‘Mise En Abyme’?
To view a spectator realm under the observer cum producer in the film is unique. This allows him to explore the subject matter of the film’s creativity and construction by offering a spectacle within a spectacle. This genre has gifted many great films within its over 150 years, including The Exorcist (1974), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Truman Show (1998), Inglorious Bastards (2009), Once Upon A Time in Hollywood(2019), etc.
This paper does not consider Ashes (Kulu) to be a mise en abyme film, it cannot be left out of the discussion because of the mixed genre of sorts that it uses. Ashes is a Turkish feature film directed by Erdem Tepegöz and written by Erdi Isik, with the lead character Gokce portrayed by Funda Eryigit. Gokce is a designer who owns her boutique, while her husband Kenan has attained success as a publisher of books and has a high-class taste. After 10 years of marriage and amidst all promises, the couple has simply grown indifferent to each other, thus explaining the modern-day relationship blues. During such a special day, Mr. Kenan decides to awaken the fire inside of Gokce and showcase remarkable ways to praise her.
Instantly fascinated, Gokce begins with one of the books. The character in the movie is an author who loves someone by the name of M and shares a magical love story with her. Unfortunately for him, M turns out to be a fantasy and the price this author pays in the end is his life. With Gokce’s efforts to seek the story of the manuscript, she blurs the lines between make-believe stories and actual happenings in her life.
In Balat, which is a charming district of Istanbul, she meets a man who resembles Mr. M (played by Alperen Duymaz) and easily falls in love with him just like the author has gone through. As the movie heads for its climax, we viewers want to know whether Gokce is living in a real-world or one which is created by her imagination. Assuming she is living in the fictional world, Gokce seems to end up causing her demise. Why then does her fictional life seem to be so relatable to her real life? This is if you have no clue. You will have to wait till the end when the movie is finally available on Netflix.
The writing in ‘Ashes’ delves into an intriguing idea: your truth can be a lie to someone else, and the other way. The film cleverly blurs the boundaries between the audience’s fantasy and reality, causing many ‘what ifs’ and ‘why nots’ areas of consideration. The screenplay manages to achieve this, and it further adds to the interest of the story and its broad perspective.
Nevertheless, Ashes’ has a wonderful screenplay, but several aspects of the same are not perfectly put in place. To put it simply, the film is able to work around all the requirements but seems to lack a few ingredients. Since the story is fast, it leaves the characters apart from Gokce less developed due to lack of adequate time.
While it is true that Gokce’s fragility and vulnerability are effectively presented, it is also true that other supporting cast such as Kenan and M and M are underwritten, making the audience sympathize with them. At the same time, the love story is not convincing either since it places more emphasis on sexual rather than emotional concerns and has more of a negative effect on Gokce.
There may not be any major impacts that the screenwriting will make in building an impressive love story, but this cannot be said for the technical features of ‘Ashes’. The art directors profusely injected life into the town of Balat as described in the script. To add, the costumes also embody Gokce’s emotional development throughout the film.
Through a spectacular display of visual effects and camera angles, the tower scene has been able to establish its importance without any words. Bathtub scenes also work on the count of the occurrences around Gokce as well.
Ashes is the first movie Funda Eryigit has played Gokce and I can say that she deserves extra points in this role. It is very fascinating to observe as she goes between a confident woman and a woman exposed. Eryigit herself is one of the factors that make this movie interesting, which is however disappointing. The reason for that is the script is simply too shallow and the pace is too quick.
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