Mr. Verhoeven had flown in from Los Angeles to welcome and meet Turkish film aficionados and stayed on to discuss his remarkable career after the movie had been shown.“Turkish Delight” (1973) is in the director’s own words a rather liberal film; “liberal” not in a political sense but because it rotates around the intertwined subjects of relations between the sexes, and violence. At the same time it confronts the viewer with his own set of prejudices: In one of the first scenes, Eric purportedly kills his wife Olga and another man who may or may not have had an affair with Olga. Putting relations between men and women and their hormone-based attractiveness into perspective, the film introduces Eric and Olga as a young couple who become obsessed with each other. Whether watching a happy makeshift marriage or witnessing Olga’s death due to an incurable illness, whether showcasing the two sides of Dutch everyday life -- laissez-faire and sexually liberated versus conservative and middle-class focused, to finally exposing his characters to a rollercoaster of everything that life can possibly offer.
Only towards the end of the movie do we realize that Eric simply dreamed about killing the pair but never laid hands on them; Verhoeven had managed to transform the audience into a combination of voyeurs and those with an “I saw it coming” mentality. A great movie to say the least!
As the film was shown in its original Dutch language version with Turkish subtitles none of the emotions or utterances of the original characters had been lost. The film’s accompanying music was a perfect match, too. Those guests in the audience old enough were transported back into the 1970s; the younger members were exposed to a certain “carefree” way of life they may not have seen depicted on the silver screen before. However, “carefree” only worked out as a reaction to mainstream statism and, hence, did not survive much longer than the next decade or so as both attitudes ultimately merged to become a much milder middle-of-the-road version. Dutch society in the 21st century -- a far cry from the “anything goes” mentality as found in the ‘70s -- is proof of that.
The movie does not tell us what to think and Verhoeven said that he only wishes to portray reality. Answering another question raised by the audience he mentioned that the title “Turkish Delight” is a metaphor chosen by the original authors of the book that had become the script for his 1973 movie but, as such, bears no resemblance to either past or modern-day Turkish society.
Five more films are on show until next Sunday. For full program, check: www.istanbulmodern.org.
