Burning Days

(Kurak Günler, Emil Alper, Turkey/France, 2022)

If there is ever a Hollywood remake of Burning Days, it will surely be titled Village Heat.

This is because, in many respects, Emil Alper’s film customises many classic film noir tropes for its own, decidedly modern purpose.

Prosecutor Emre (Selahattin Paşalı) is a newcomer to the Turkish village of Yaniklar. His first case, the rape of a local gypsy girl, is complicated by the fact that he himself was an eyewitness at a drunken party – except that a blackout (that great noir device of unconsciousness!) has clouded his memory.

The narrative is densely woven from three plot strands: the rape; a local political battle involving water management and deadly sinkholes in the earth (reminiscent of the public intrigue in Polanski’s Chinatown [1974]); and, last but not least, an intimate question involving Emre’s own sexuality – and the extent of his willingness to acknowledge it. (It definitely went unacknowledged by Turkey’s General Directorate of Cinema, which mysteriously demanded production funding back well after the film’s successful festival haul.)

These story threads are seemingly separate until events pull them together in surprising ways.

Traditional noir elements – such as the paranoia of a stranger faced with the disquieting, sometimes violent rituals of a tightly-knit community – are evoked not only for the sake of an atmosphere of dread, but also to address the political reality of mob mentality in today’s world.

© Adrian Martin 14 December 2022