§0. There are many story lines that one could evaluate. Most of them are poorly developed. But one is exceptionally promising.
§0.1. One story is an urban prosecutor coming to a rural context, meddling with things with some sort of idealism, and getting consumed by the local power dynamics. This is a recurring theme in Turkish modernity, where the urban character is validated where the rural, backwards, conservative folks are stigmatized en masse. It's a common story since 1930s. In this movie, it's not properly designed. There is an idea, but as the movie moves on, the story gets less and less coherent. It then ends abruptly and prematurely, leaving the audience with a taste of half cooked food.
§0.2. Another story is the rape of a young woman and the intrigues around it. In this also, the story gets tangled up with no coherent way out. Besides, the entire subplot is made through the "male gaze", making the story quite problematic.
§0.3. If we analyze the movie with the above plots in mind, our conclusion would be: the director had a good idea, but started filming before developing it, and then had to stop it when the budget ended.
§1. However, there is one underlying story that reviewers seem to ignore: the climate emergency. Now bear with me a little bit.
§2. If I would make a move on the climate crisis, this is the story I would tell. Climate chaos is not about some abstract drought or some abrupt disaster. It's not about nature. It's about collapsing societies. Climate chaos will manifest itself exactly through the existing social and political relations. And all power will be articulated through it.
§3. This thread is omnipresent throughout the movie:
§3.1. This movie is called "arid days" (I think the translation to "burning days" gives it a wrong twist. The Turkish original has nothing to do with anything burning.)
§3.2. The landscape is dead. We are regularly exposed to the desert-like landscape, and the lakes next to it (implying that the region is not supposed to be as arid as it is).
§3.3. The rulers are talking about diminishing underground water sources and their "solutions" to it. Their solution is imploding the entire town. (We hear later that there is a better solution, but it's "expensive".)
§3.4. The rulers also say they have their back covered. They have water tanks at home. They even offer it to a newcomer power-holder (prosecutor).
§3.5. All other systems of oppression are accentuated by the chronic drought and water scarcity. We see this throughout the movie. Two big examples. 1) There is an obscene image where they wash the gypsy girl with a water-hose. It's their signal of privilege and domination. 2) The whole narrative that the journalist investigating the subsiding lands is discarded as gay, and the prosecutor's house is attacked with the same side-narrative.
§3.6. No one ever mentions climate crisis. (This is a very important aspect of the climate crisis, because it will be a recurring theme in the upcoming decades. Nobody told the story of the Syrian civil war as a climate collapse. Nobody refers to human beings drowning in the Mediterranean Sea as climate migrants. There is always some other "cause" to blame which makes the narrative more convenient. - In the movie, it's "population".)
§3.7. The entire society is mobilized and polarized through the water issue. The ruling faction that controls the narrative controls the already-agitated masses. Those masses are angry for a good reason. They walk around with empty water cans. They cue with empty water cans. They protest with empty water cans.
§4. I wish more directors would experiment with climate crisis as contexts in which the society would be in transformation. This movie should be highlighted and remembered as one of the first and most daring attempts in this direction.
§0.1. One story is an urban prosecutor coming to a rural context, meddling with things with some sort of idealism, and getting consumed by the local power dynamics. This is a recurring theme in Turkish modernity, where the urban character is validated where the rural, backwards, conservative folks are stigmatized en masse. It's a common story since 1930s. In this movie, it's not properly designed. There is an idea, but as the movie moves on, the story gets less and less coherent. It then ends abruptly and prematurely, leaving the audience with a taste of half cooked food.
§0.2. Another story is the rape of a young woman and the intrigues around it. In this also, the story gets tangled up with no coherent way out. Besides, the entire subplot is made through the "male gaze", making the story quite problematic.
§0.3. If we analyze the movie with the above plots in mind, our conclusion would be: the director had a good idea, but started filming before developing it, and then had to stop it when the budget ended.
§1. However, there is one underlying story that reviewers seem to ignore: the climate emergency. Now bear with me a little bit.
§2. If I would make a move on the climate crisis, this is the story I would tell. Climate chaos is not about some abstract drought or some abrupt disaster. It's not about nature. It's about collapsing societies. Climate chaos will manifest itself exactly through the existing social and political relations. And all power will be articulated through it.
§3. This thread is omnipresent throughout the movie:
§3.1. This movie is called "arid days" (I think the translation to "burning days" gives it a wrong twist. The Turkish original has nothing to do with anything burning.)
§3.2. The landscape is dead. We are regularly exposed to the desert-like landscape, and the lakes next to it (implying that the region is not supposed to be as arid as it is).
§3.3. The rulers are talking about diminishing underground water sources and their "solutions" to it. Their solution is imploding the entire town. (We hear later that there is a better solution, but it's "expensive".)
§3.4. The rulers also say they have their back covered. They have water tanks at home. They even offer it to a newcomer power-holder (prosecutor).
§3.5. All other systems of oppression are accentuated by the chronic drought and water scarcity. We see this throughout the movie. Two big examples. 1) There is an obscene image where they wash the gypsy girl with a water-hose. It's their signal of privilege and domination. 2) The whole narrative that the journalist investigating the subsiding lands is discarded as gay, and the prosecutor's house is attacked with the same side-narrative.
§3.6. No one ever mentions climate crisis. (This is a very important aspect of the climate crisis, because it will be a recurring theme in the upcoming decades. Nobody told the story of the Syrian civil war as a climate collapse. Nobody refers to human beings drowning in the Mediterranean Sea as climate migrants. There is always some other "cause" to blame which makes the narrative more convenient. - In the movie, it's "population".)
§3.7. The entire society is mobilized and polarized through the water issue. The ruling faction that controls the narrative controls the already-agitated masses. Those masses are angry for a good reason. They walk around with empty water cans. They cue with empty water cans. They protest with empty water cans.
§4. I wish more directors would experiment with climate crisis as contexts in which the society would be in transformation. This movie should be highlighted and remembered as one of the first and most daring attempts in this direction.