What Disgusting Creatures Human Beings Are!

It’s terrifying what we can do for love.

We like to romanticise love. Hollywood has moulded Love into a powerful, beautiful force, an everlasting bond that breaks all barriers and bounds. We see the passionate displays of affection on the movie screens, and our heart melts a little, in joy for the two characters, who love each other very much and will thusly live happily ever after to the end of their days.

All of this is true. Love is indeed good. Sometimes. Every coin has its tails, though.

After all, love is a basic need, just like air, food, water. Humans need to Love and to Be Loved. By someone. Sometimes a special someone. But not everyone in this world can have their needs met. The truth is, some of us are Unloved by those we love. Unwanted by those we want. Sometimes due to faults of our own, other times not. Usually both. But the fact remains that we are unloved. Sometimes, even when we are loved, we are not loved by those people. And that is a shitty feeling to feel. That absence of love makes us feel many things. A desperation to fill that void, an anger at being wronged by those around us, sometimes a sweet melancholy of wallowing and enjoying our own suffering. If left to ferment long enough, these emotions can lead us to think some very dark thoughts, and commit some truly deplorable deeds.

And those deplorable deeds, done in the heat and the passion, done out of the uncontrollable impulses that shake us sometimes, they can leave a scar. A scar that never heals. A scar left in the name of love.

Ever since I watched Zeki Demirkubuz’s movie Innocence (Masumiyet), I’ve been thinking about all this. The movie shows us another side to love, one that is dark, but one that is at the same time … everything. The film documents the lives of Yusuf, Bekir, and Ugur. All of them are outcasts. And all of them have only love to live for.

Yusuf has just been released from prison against his will. Estranged from his married sister (whose lover he murdered), the mild-mannered, gentle boy finds accomodation in a rundown motel, where he meets the duo of Ugur and Bekir. Bekir is madly in love with Ugur, a nightclub singer and a prostitute, who is madly in love with Zagor, who is serving life in prison. They have a deaf, mute kid Cilem (she was born that way due to Zagor beating Ugur while pregnant) that Ugur takes care of with Bekir. An innocent victim of those uncontrollable human impulses.

20 years ago, Bekir fell in love with Ugur, and he hasn’t been the same since. For 20 years he has followed her around, dogged her every step, all while being rejected by her. She didn’t give him, for 20 years, what she gives everyone else. He tried leaving her, many times, but he always found himself crawling back. So he endures. He told himself that there is no other way. You cannot get over her. Stay with her. Give into it and walk quietly.

20 years later, he recounts all of this to Yusuf in a park, wistfully smoking a cigarette. Look at me, he says. I’m walking quietly.

Cilem prances around in the background, taking in the sights. Observing. Never speaking, because of those uncontrollable human impulses that condemned her before she was born. Never hearing the sound of her own name.

Eventually, Yusuf, with no one else to turn to, spends a few days in the motel. And he gets sucked into this new world, this world of chaos and melodrama, this world governed by love and nothing more. He doesn’t do much: he only accompanies Bekir and Ugur on the little errands they run. But he slowly becomes part of the furniture. He develops a sweet friendship with the blind daughter Cilem, and a rapport with the innkeeper. He’s not the center of this drama, but like the innkeeper, like Cilem, he’s the one sweeping up the pieces.

There is a recurring scene where the three of them watch whatever standard melodrama is playing on the TV at the inn lobby, alongside the other guests who look equally as lost as our characters. Cinema can bring these lonely depressives together, even if its for a brief moment, even if its fake.

Speaking of motifs, Zeki loves to show us doors. The movie starts with a door that, inexplicably, can’t close properly, always opening a little with a creak. And we the viewers voyeuristically observe Yusuf through this door, before being led into his experience. Whenever a character enters a room, the film shows us the 2 seconds of darkness preceding it. When they leave, the camera lingers a little longer. Maybe in this world, the doors we keep on our hearts never fully close. Our emotions, our lies, our secrets always end up seeping out, for the world to see in all their ugliness, just as Bekir the pimp, on more than one occasion, unleashes his fury on Ugur his whore for not loving him.

It is these three wanderers, Yusuf, Bekir, and Ugur, loving loners shunned by society, and their hopeless desires, that shape the rest of the film.

[spoilers beyond this point]

In the end, Bekir can’t walk quietly anymore. After yet another melodramatic, violent outburst at Ugur, the final straw has broken his back. He is just as hopeless as he was 20 years ago. His obsession remains the same. Ugur’s lack of interest remains the same. His inability to move on remains the same. Ugur will never give him what he wants. And no amount of screaming will help that. But this time, he chooses not to endure. He puts a bullet through his mouth. 20 years of fruitless suffering, over.

Eventually, Yusuf takes Bekir’s place in the hierarchy. He falls in love with Ugur, and he wants to put an end to those inescapable cycles of violence. Let’s get out of here, he finally says. He wants stability, a job, a place where they can take care of their blind, mute, daughter.

But Ugur is hardened. She screams at Yusuf, how dare you? How dare you love me?

Just like with Bekir, she rejects Yusuf’s love. Even in the presence of people who love her, she remains determinedly, doggedly, a prostitute. In a twisted sense, she has become a nun, starving herself of love and punishing herself by remaining a whore. Because she had sinned by loving that madman Zagor. And this is her punishment. To be trapped in that love forever, and to be unable to love anyone else. To sell herself out to bastards who can’t even please their own wives.

No, Ugur says. It’s been 20 years. Nowhere left to go. Nothing left to say. She will endure her punishment.

There is some drama that follows. Yusuf leaves, but is quickly summoned back by Ugur, and for a brief moment she seems to say yes. She agrees to move in with Yusuf, go to a neighbouring city, start a new life. And she makes this revelation.

 “I like the things you told me. I thought you were being sincere. I never showed it, but it was the same with Bekir too. I secretly loved it when he got crazy and jealous.

What disgusting creatures human beings are.“

Things do not go to plan, however. It turns out, Zagor has broken out of prison and murdered an old friend. Ugur too flees to find him.

And Yusuf is left with the kid. Both innocent victims of those uncontrollable human impulses. When he glances at the news channel playing on the TV screen, he sees a mugshot of Ugur for a split second. Before the broadcaster moves on to something else. That split second meant nothing for anyone. But for Yusuf, it was his life.

Personally, I found it hard to believe that Yusuf could have killed someone. He simply isn’t that stone cold hard killer we recognise in the movies. Here is a killer that is meek, sensitive, gentle, mouselike even. When he is rejected by Ugur, he cries. Instead of a Bond villain, we get Raskolnikov.

How did he even do that? You know, pull the trigger on his best friend? Maybe he too was governed by those uncontrollable human impulses 10 years ago. Maybe he too had been fermenting for too long in that desperation, anger, melancholy on that fateful night. Maybe he too had scarred himself, his sister, his brother-in-law, their kid, in the name of love.

Masumiyet shows us the other side of the coin. Love in Zeki’s world is not a force of beauty. No, it is a plague, a dark, viscous mass that leaves indelible scar on those it touches. It traps all these people in endless, inescapable cycles. Bekir can try leaving Ugur as many times as he wants, but he has been touched by that plague, and once you are, there is no turning back. Thinking about it, it is pretty crazy that nothing more than human emotions is the cause of so much suffering. Suffering is not something reserved for the soldiers the slum-dwellers, or the saints; no, it is within every one of us, and all it takes is some unrequited love to stir it up.

With his two fleeting friends gone, Yusuf remembers an old friend from prison. When he visits him, he sees his father. Turns out, Orhan had died the previous night. We do not know why. Yusuf’s last friend, perished. He is now cut off from both his lives.

The film cuts to black, and on screen, the famous Samuel Beckett quote (in Turkish). The subtitles I downloaded, for some reason, gave me this English → Turkish → English translation.

“You always tried.
You always lost.
Never mind.
Try again.
Lose again.
But be a better loser.”

As the end credits roll, we are left to ponder the meaning of those words. Maybe in this shitty world where doors never close, failure is all these people can hope for. But they can still endure quietly, keep trying to be a better loser.

-Karthik Baskar