Also, how have topics of sex and gender been addressed in other films we've seen this semester? Obviously sex and gender were central to Sally Potter's Orlando (as we explored in our discussion) but what about some of the other films we've viewed so far?
I appreciated how this film discusses sexuality from both a male and female perspective.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking about the scene wear she is completely brutalized by the three turkish men. She keeps egging the men on... i recall her standing soaked in blood saying something the extent of "fuck your mothers..." and on of the men saying,"Now, I'm going to fuck her!"...Pointing to a relationship between sex and violence.
I was very interested in how Sibel transformed into a version of Cahit when she was in Istanbul spinning around in the club. She abandoned her role as the female Sibel and became Cahit as she was looking for her own identity. And sex became something destructive towards her and from her instead of just the senseless screwing she did before while she was staying with Cahit.
ReplyDeleteIt was striking to me that she seemed dead when she had sex with Cahit before he asked her to go away with him. She didn't seem into it, almost as though she knew that their coupling was like a marriage of the lifestyle she left behind and knew that together they were using each other like they had used drugs and alcohol so often to try and feel alive.
The entire time Sibel was trying to get away from responsibilities, to live for herself--she didn't want to settle down and be tied to just one man. But in the end she finds that being ones self means staying in the skin you are in and accepting yourself without the aid of stimulae to take you someplace else. It was a false freedom at first. Ironic that she found self respect and a sense of self worth in being a mother and a committed girlfriend and yet it was also what clipped her wings.
I'll comment later on other films. Its late.
I found some of the editing, camerawork, and sound design to be rather jarring at times, but not in a negative way. Sibel and Cahit's voilent, and masochistic desire to hit rock bottom would not have worked with out equally unsettling production values.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't stop thinking about the intense kind of love that the movie addressed, the kind that sneaks up on you and is suddenly all consuming. Unfortunately, these two were separated immediately after their discovery, and in anguish, rebelling against their former selves, both made complete 180s in one sense or another, and in some ways adopted aspects of one anothers' personalities.
ReplyDeleteCahit made the effort (rather without choice, being in jail) to come clean, literally and also with himself. He had to be honest with himself about his past, that its behind him, and his wife will never come back, so all the suffering he put upon himself, drinking and being angry all the time, was only drawing out the pain. Some of the sweet sincerity of Sibel's sober self (wow, thats a lot of s words...) became a central part of Cahit's post-prison affect.
Sibel, on the other hand, realized her life wasn't all she had thought it would be. She was getting laid, but what she really needed was love. In rebellion against all the meaningless male attention she had been receiving, she cut her hair, wore masculine clothing, and started acting like a man, all things that go against the gender grain in her Turkish culture. That brings up a whole separate topic... But Sibel's temporary adoption of the life Cahit had before her probably taught her a lot about the limits of the human body and mind, and she proved to herself that all she really wanted was someone to love.
in my opinion the film was about overcoming fear, by the end of it both of them had. terrified to live, they were both suicidal. unable to function properly in their societies and the boundaries and stigmas attached to them, they werent able to escape their own prisons. confronting the fear by actually coming extremely close to death, her desire, sibel was able to come to terms with herself, and ultimately found love within her child, learning that there are more important things in the world beyond a quick fix, such as sex, drugs, or suicide.
ReplyDelete