Anatolian Leopard

Anadolu Leopar?

Courtesy the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival

VERDICT: The conservative new social order sidelines an old-school zookeeper in Emre Kayis’s closely observed, metaphoric first feature about Turkish society, winner of the Fipresci award in Toronto.

As Burt Lancaster’s Prince of Salina famously said in Visconti’s The Leopard, for things to stay as they are, they have to change. This paradoxical truism appears quite out of reach for the alienated hero of Anatolian Leopard (Anadolu Leopar?), a man no longer young who sees the leftist world he always identified with in shambles around him, as the Turkish right gains ascendancy. In his first feature film, director Emre Kayis chronicles his hero’s own inner change, a transformation that comes across as a gentle mental upgrade more than a roar. But in a wider sense, the film is a melancholy portrait of an entire society that has lost its bearings and its moral force. This quiet, beautifully shot first film won the Fipresci award when it bowed in Toronto and continues what should be a long and rewarding festival life with its competition screening at the Antalya Golden Orange festival.

Kayis has a penchant for metaphors and a talent in choosing them. His master metaphor is that a rare leopard, an endangered species native to Anatolia and considered a “national treasure,” is no longer wanted by society’s rulers. (The Prince of Salina would surely sympathize.) The specimen we meet in the zoo is an aging creature whose best days are behind him. One might say the same thing about the zoo’s director, the kindly and much respected Fikret Ozturk (Ugur Polat), whose impeccable work and dedication to his job doesn’t mean beans to the town’s ambitious mayor. In cahoots with a minister, the mayor is one step away from signing the zoo over to a group of Arab investors interested in converting it into a futuristic amusement park.

Only one thing stands in the way of this dismal prospect: the Anatolian leopard, the national treasure. Sitting in on the meeting with a look of dull suffering, Fikret knows the jig is up if the animal finds a new home in another zoo. On New Year’s Eve, after reminding himself that his lefty friends (visual clue: small portraits of Che Guevara on the walls) are aging losers and his ex-wife and daughter are extremely turned on by money, Fikret gets drunk and drives to the zoo to talk to the only one who understands him. He finds the leopard dead in its cage.

There is an undercurrent of gentle humor in the film that sometimes recalls the absurdity of a Roy Andersson situation, like Fikret’s ritualized relationship with zoo official Gamze (Ipek Turktan), who works in the outer room like a 1950’s secretary and each morning, five seconds after his arrival, knocks on his door with bad news. It takes almost the whole film for Fikret to entertain a romantic notion about her, and even that is a pretty weak desire.

Yet Gamze greatly surprises him – and us – when it is revealed that she has played an important role in a transformative act he performs after the leopard’s death. This strategic move is aimed at keeping the zoo open and the off-shore investors and aggressive politicians at bay;  more importantly, it gives Fikret new purpose in a life that has become drab and meaningless. Polat, a veteran performer whose soulful eyes are able to stare down the most agitated cop, has expressed his self-loathing in a despairing monologue that hits home. Now a chance for redemption appears.

Several faces in the supporting cast stand out, creating an outsized menagerie in Fikret’s life. Seyithan Ozdemir is touching as a simple giant whose job it was to take care of the leopard and who locks himself in its cage when it disappears. Tansu Bicer has a sardonic sense of humor and a knowledge of the classics that turns Fikret’s would-be nemesis the Prosecutor into someone we look forward to seeing.

A consistent technical vision unifies the film around D.P. Nick Cooke’s soothing white-gray color scheme punctuated with night shots that reveal small, telling details of the screen. Production design is lively and subtly expressive, like the field of broken columns and ancient ruins that nearly obscure the modern city (presumably Ankara) behind them, or the strange hockey bar that Fikret frequents without ever glancing at the game taking place on the other side of the window pane.

Director, screenplay: Emre Kayis
Cast: Ugur Polat, Ipek Turktan, Tansu Bicer, Ege Aydan, Ezgi Gor, Seyithan Ozdemir
Producer: Olena Yershova
Cinematography: Nick Cooke
Production design: Monika Sajko-Gradowska, Billur Turan
Costume design: Oyku Ersoy
Editing: Ricardo Saraiva, Olivia Neergaard-Holm
Sound: Tobias Adam
Production companies: Tato Film (Turkey), Mitteldeutsche Medienforderung (Germany), Polish Film Institute (Poland), Det Danske Filminstitut (Denmark)
World sales: Luxbox
Venue: Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
In Turkish
113 minutes