CIFF 2022 | ‘Burning Days’ review: The best white-knuckle thrill ride this side of the Mediterranean
From one of Turkey’s foremost directors and political historians comes a gripping, incisive study of how power turns men into monsters.
Selahattin Paşali in “Burning Days.” Photo courtesy of The Match Factory.
Emin Alper is a very smart man, especially when it comes to the inner workings of his own country. This shouldn’t really be up for debate, considering the man has a Bachelor’s in Economics, a PhD in Turkish History, and is currently serving as a professor of social sciences at the Istanbul Technical University. His track record with making films, most of which have been about microcosms of Turkish political turmoil, is just as stellar. His second feature film “Frenzy” bagged the Special Jury Prize at Venice in 2014, and all subsequent entries into his filmography have been Un Certain Regard competitors at Cannes. This, of course, includes “Burning Days,” Alper’s latest re-examination of the Turkish political psyche and the grinding gears of the political machine at large, this time through the lens of Yaniklar, a small, impoverished rural Turkish village.
While narratively very different, “Burning Days” echoes “Frenzy” on multiple notes — not that that’s a bad thing at all, seeing as “Frenzy” appears to have created an award-winning formula for Alper. In his own words, Alper’s films focus keenly on “how the political system turns “little men” into the cogs of its violent mechanism.” But where “Frenzy” focused on how state-sponsored violence and authoritarian hierarchies lead to an individual’s downfall, “Burning Days” flips the script. Here, Alper explores how, if manipulated subtly and carefully, a political system that appears democratic on its face might truly be an autocracy in disguise.
“Burning Days” finds its protagonist in Emre, brought domineeringly to life by Selahattin Paşali, who also looks uncannily like a Turkish version of Tom Holland in this role. As expected of any Tom-Holland-adjacent character, Emre is young and fresh-faced; a newly-minted state prosecutor who has just taken up a post in sun-baked Yaniklar. This new job is no cakewalk, though — Yaniklar is so underdeveloped that it lacks reliable electricity, a sewage disposal system, and most importantly, a public supply of running water.
It is this lack of running water that is leading to the biggest problem plaguing the already beleaguered village. Yaniklar’s bare-facedly corrupt mayor, Selim Östürk, is being sued for causing the eruption of several massive sinkholes in and around the village by draining too much water underground, purportedly for a sewage pipeline construction project. Despite Yaniklar being in a state of permanent drought, this underground water doesn’t ever make its way into citizens’ bottles. Instead, it is used to ensure that the Östürk villa is the only house with running water all year round, while the villagers continue to bathe in nearby lakes and conserve their water sparingly until the next water tanker is sent into town by Selim, with plenty of accompanying fanfare and reminders to re-elect him in the upcoming mayoral elections. Emre’s house is falling apart, too; plagued by rats in the walls that even poison can’t kill — an apt metaphor for what he finds lurking in the heart of the village.
Selahattin Paşali in “Burning Days.” Photo courtesy of The Match Factory.
Unsurprisingly, Emre isn’t exactly enamoured by Yaniklar and its denizens. A city boy from Ankara, he is disgusted (and a little frightened) by the locals’ fondness for bloodsports — hunting wild boars and painting the streets with their entrails — and openly disapproves of the lechery that the men of Yaniklar exhibit towards the town’s women. Şahin Östürk (a leery, menacing Erol Babaoğlu), the mayor’s son, is the worst and most unrepentant offender on both counts, and Emre’s unyielding adherence to the law ensures that the two soon come head to head in a war of attrition. But where Emre is a straight-shooter, Şahin doesn’t feel beholden to playing by the rules, and Emre soon finds himself in the centre of a swirling vortex of corruption, deceit, and violence.
Alper’s sociological parable about the evils of political machinations, particularly when they are used to sedate or suppress the impoverished, is shrewd and farsighted; like examining the situation through a compound eye. Sure, the party in power is bare-facedly corrupt, but neither is the leftist alternative a knight in shining armour for Yaniklar. In fact, the village doesn’t seem to have much hope at all, given that the only villager intent on ousting Selim as mayor is Murat (Eki̇n Koç), a former sex worker turned shady opposition journalist and social pariah who constantly lurks in Emre’s periphery like a crazed stalker. Murat may be dashing, but he is clearly far from innocent or honest, adding a further layer of suspense to Alper’s already twisted web of power, corruption, and lies. Nor is Emre, whose skewed perspective on both the past and the present controls the way we view the film, perfect. Alper’s hallmark filmmaking style mixing delusion, paranoia, and reality ratchets up the tension further, until we come to wonder if Emre himself might be an unreliable narrator too. After all, despite being a man of the law, it’s clear he revels in exercising his prosecutorial powers in front of his inferiors, and his actions often border on sheer megalomania. Could it be that in spite of all the corruption around him, he is still somehow the biggest monster among them all?
“Burning Days” also treads new ground for Alper, as he paints an intriguing portrait of male desire that aims to neither moralise nor demonise. The sexual tension between Murat and Emre is obvious from the second they meet by a lake outside Yaniklar; Emre half-naked from a swim; Murat staring inscrutably at him. (It probably is no coincidence that both leads are played by two of Turkey’s foremost male sex symbols; one comment on “Burning Days” from the film social media site Letterboxd even reads “If there’s no sex scene between Ekin Koç and Selahattin Paşali, then don’t waste my time.”) But in rural Turkey, queerness still doesn’t fly — one reason for Murat’s ostracism is that he is bisexual, and Emre is goaded into possibly committing a horrific crime to “prove that the rumours about [his sexuality] aren’t true.” For Emre, queerness (and his attraction to Murat) is precariously positioned as both a source of solace and self-delusion. As different people begin to give different accounts of what happened on a night Emre cannot recall, the young prosecutor begins to grapple with himself inwardly too. Did he actually commit a crime? Or is he so afraid of his own dawning sexuality that he’d rather believe himself a criminal?
Selahattin Paşali and Ekin Koç in “Burning Days.” Photo courtesy of The Match Factory.
It certainly helps that Paşali has his Kubrick stare perfected to a T, menacingly smoldering away as he marches through Yaniklar’s dusty streets. Thanks to Paşali’s commanding lead performance, Alper keeps the tension thick and palpable for the entire film; never once releasing his grip on the pressure valve for cheap thrills. As tensions between Emre and the villagers rise, we are shown how already-corrupt individuals exploit the loopholes of conventional democracy by manipulating poor and desperate populations into keeping them in power, essentially for life. The people of Yaniklar do not want to be saved. Selim has held on to power with the promise of water for years, and despite never having fulfilled his electoral promise, his careful drip-feeding of the villagers with the occasional water tanker has made them so loyal to him that they are willing to resort to cold-blooded violence in his name. In an environment of extreme deprivation, loyalty is cheap, and empty words about ethics or morals are useless currency in the face of even partially fulfilled promises.
By the time the formidable 130-minute runtime of “Burning Days” is up, you wouldn’t be out of place if you feel like you’ve just undergone an appendectomy without anesthesia. Much like the sinkholes consuming Yaniklar, Alper’s first-rate suspense-building will open up a pit in viewers’ stomachs until the breathtaking final shot unfolds. As the old adage goes, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And when the latter happens, it is always the common people who get swept up in the storm, bringing out the worst in themselves in the name of a leader who doesn’t truly care for them.
Although Alper’s bloodthirsty tale didn’t take home any prizes at Cannes this year, I’m inclined to take that as less of a critical indictment against it, and more of an indication that the film belonged in the Competition Officiel category instead. After all, the Un Certain Regard category usually focuses on alternative narratives, and “Burning Days” comes as close to a conventional thriller as one can get on a budget cobbled together by multiple international arts ministry grants. Stylistically, “Burning Days” is also indeed nowhere near the time-warping oddities in Marie Kreutzer’s festival circuit favourite “Corsage,” nor does it boast a narrative as off-beat as jury prize winner “The Worst Ones.” What it does have, however, is the earth-shaking power of ripping the palsied, rotting heart out of a long-standing institution, and holding it up for all to see. Now all that remains is to turn towards it, and behold.
