TIFF 2021: Anatolian Leopard
TIFF 2021At some point, all people are bound to take a soulful inward look at their worth and gauge whether or not they’ve brought a value-added to their workplace, community, or family. It’s not a guessing game or self-assessment game that’s particularly meaningful to the young, which is why Anatolian Leopard feels a bit like an old-man’s film. It’s also not the peppy, straightforward flick that one hopes for on Day 7 of a film festival, but once one adjusts the thinking, Anatolian Leopard settles into a solid thoughtful and melancholic film. It doesn’t hit the visual peaks or have the emotional wallop of some of Ingmar Bergman’s films, but it would be no stretch to learn that director Emre Kayiş was an admirer of such meditative, allegorical cinema.
With a slow, steady pacing, Anatolian Leopard follows the waning days of an aging zookeeper’s tenure in his job at a significant Turkish zoo. The zookeeper, Fikret, is a respected, gentlemanly professional who doesn’t say much, but rather takes in everything around him. Anatolian Leopard is filled with mood, albeit the consistent, steady mood of a rather un-relatable and tiring old man. In this atmosphere, the film is filled with the presence of Fikret’s résumé – ’22 years’ experience directing the national zoo’. However, the antagonist here is progress itself, and it’s inevitable. The film opens with the zoo’s giraffe being moved from the zoo. It’s an impressive practical visual of this stoic giant being moved in a truck. One hopes that the truck doesn’t encounter highway underpasses on its journey to the next wildlife preserve. We then come to learn that the weathered, dated city zoo is slated to be replaced by a modern amusement park. Slowing the development is that the zoo houses an Anatolian leopard – a cherished local animal protected by law, so development can’t happen yet. When the animal happens to die of natural causes, Fikret heads a ruse to hide the body and perpetuate the lie that it’s escaped and running wild.
The leopard – and Fikret himself – are symbols of the old guard. They’re valued and appreciated, but they’re quite innocuous fixtures of a stagnant nationalism and values of ‘good old days’. In a way, Emre Kayiş cares less of what they are and more about what they aren’t. What they don’t represent is modern, progress-centric profiteers. With international investment commitments in place, gentrification is nigh.
Anatolian Leopard is Fikret’s character study. Fikret (played with a sullen depth of experience by Uğur Polat) is guy who used to be a dynamic character but is now a slow-moving, solitary middle-manager. His dull demeanour contrasts that of his old classmates, who show up to contrast Fikret with outspoken political know-it-all points of view and progressive urban development plans. They hold Fikret in high regard, but it’s clear that he’s the old guard. Try as he might to fit in – Fikret even takes a date to a class reunion event, but leaves her there to be mercilessly flirted with by his contemporaries as he goes off to take care of other commitments – he just doesn’t. He’s the manager, not the entrepreneur, and he doesn’t fit with progress. He’s a swell guy, but he’s outmatched all things progressive.
Allegorical writing is Anatolian Leopard’s bread and butter. The police investigator who is working the case of the missing leopard is also well-written as a storyteller. Serving as an impromptu narrator, he tells the story of gravedigger whose livelihood was threatened when a new hospital and medical services came to town and ‘people with one foot in the grave’ suddenly got well. This is the film’s greater symbolism and is applicable to Fikret. It’s the layer that pulls the audience into the textured troubles of his journey as he struggles with modernity. Uğur Polat sells this sense of Fikret being a relic – expired yet still serviceable. He even looks ‘dated’ at least in his mannerisms, almost like stars of old Hollywood. His Stalin-esque moustache evokes politics of yesteryear as well. Uğur Polat is brilliant vessel for writer/director Emre Kayiş to reconcile the admirable national values of the past with the need to embrace progress. And to put an exclamation point on his nationalism in a time of change, Kayiş ends the film with beautiful closing shot that captures both Turkey new and Turkey old.