LFF 2021: Brother’s Keeper
LFFFerit Karahan's Brother's Keeper is a dark and often emotively brooding drama that sways itself into a mystery of sorts with immoral and sinister suggestions which boil into a feature that questions hierarchy – and the lack thereof – protection regarding authority.
While the style here is effective in its approach, often utilising a documentarian esque aesthetic to galvanise the reality and immersion from cinematographer Türksoy Gölebeyi. An element to proceedings that does an excellent job of achieving that quality of immersion and emotive connection to the sequences that occur. Said technique is even more so effective when the storms and isolation begin to occur within the narrative, with the aesthetic utilised reinforcing the motif of viewer connection while also balancing said thematic withdrawal.
Undoubtedly, this is far more focused and predisposed on the substance, which is powered in the screenplay by writer-director Karahan and co-writer Gülistan Acet, who add a profoundly poignant and ferocious thematic element with this weight. The more focused approach on substance is clearly a conscious motif, as director Ferit Karahan clearly understands that the style can only elevate the material so much. There is a passion and evident fury at the themes and arcs presented within Brother's Keeper. One such element is the theme of negligence and abuse, the latter of which is a multifaceted degree of the word – often produced in inaction directly being a form of action concerning the hierarchy, which is meant to protect but ultimately in the guise of realising and understanding its true place, scrounges inability and misdirection falling into the blame game without protection.
This, of course, makes clearer sense within the context of Brother's Keeper's plot. However, this very theme is universal as of late in the social climate, of what the viewer has undoubtedly felt one way or other in their own respective lives, and with the writers Ferit Karahan and Gülistan Acet giving a clear direction of the children present within this very narrative – more so on the same level of the authoritarian and guardians of them – for good and for bad, it is a clear and often poignant exploration of this damaging and often abusive relationship that takes precedent within these circles of power.
