Winner of Best Film at the just finished 59th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Black Night from director Özcan Alper plants its seeds early in the rocky terrain of its small town setting. Why did a mob of villagers kill Ali (Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu) a young forest engineer? Why did the young man’s seemingly only friend help his murderers?
In grey daylight, the mob loaded into the back of pickup trucks speeds towards its victim’s remote cabin. They reach him by nightfall. Ishak (Berkay Ateş) approaches the doomed young man first, lit only by the forest engineer’s flashlight. In just this brief moment, the betrayal is clear on Ishak’s face.
We cut to seven years in the future. Ishak has moved far away. He’s a travelling musician. The length of his glorious hair and beard give an easy way for the audience to tell when the story is jumping between past and present. His uncle calls him to tell him to come home. Ishak’s mother is dying. His uncle reminds him he already missed the death of his father.
It makes sense he missed his father’s death. By all accounts the man was controlling and abusive. He forbade Ishak from marrying Sultan (Pinar Deniz), the woman he loved, because she was an orphan. The death of Ali hanging over the town initially stops him from wanting to see his mother in her last days. But either his filial duty or his need to deal with the past push him to go.
He packs his instrument and rides his motorcycle somewhat slowly back to his hometown. On the way he spots an old man wandering the hills. We soon learn it’s Ali’s father, endlessly searching for his son’s bones, or any clue as to his disappearance.
Present day Ishak sings a sombre rendition of a wedding song. We flashback to him singing it happily to Sultan. Ali’s first day in the town marks him quickly as different from everyone else, although he forms a musical connection with Ishak. Ali has a love of nature and life that is routinely mocked or suspected, be it his ringtone of an African song or his search for an evasive lynx that he’s been obsessed with for many years.
The film looks amazing. We connect to Ali as an outsider admiring the landscape when his forestry co-workers mock him for calling “a pile of rocks” beautiful. I thought it looked pretty nice too. The land becomes metaphor for Ishak needing to exorcise his guilt. He rappels down the many vertical caves that dot the area to search for Ali’s body.
While he searches, the movie offers many possible reasons for the killing of Ali. Threads are presented but not followed very far and so much of the intrigue is lost. Ishak’s sombreness doesn’t really match the insanity he needs to so recklessly endanger his life by exposing the seven year old murder dozens of the townsfolk had a hand in. The central relationships of Ishak and Ali, and Sultan to both of them in turn, feel undercooked. The actors play the tension believably, but the script doesn’t give them much to do otherwise. One relationship is mostly one person helping another learn math.
Killing a human is senseless, but Ishak’s involvement in the murder feels almost pointless and accidental. There’s so much stillness and deep emotion in Ishak when his face first appears under Ali’s flashlight. But the reasons and anguish that brought him to that terrible moment don’t feel enough.
The English subtitles get a little wonky at times. Most notably Ishak’s repeated use of the archaic expression ‘By Jove’, a way to express amazement without directly blaspheming God. The movie similarly pulls back in many crucial moments in a way that seems designed not to offend.
The last scene of the film takes a slightly mystical turn that could have helped the rest of the story come alive. It’s a beautiful ending that connects strongly to the terrain, but maybe not to the human characters’ emotional arcs.
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