Gemide (On Board) is a Turkish film made by Serdar Akar in 1998. Following four rather repulsive men who, on their break from transporting goods on a large freighter ship, take a night off in Istanbul and, after a brawl, kidnap a beautiful woman, taking her on board the ship. The woman, although, in fact, a prostitute and dressed wantonly, is most beautiful. Bearing virginal white skin and refined features, a blue dress, and an elegant figure, she screams innocence and — most of all — purity. She is shown as a jewel in a bed of nails.
One of the men on the ship, a character called Boxer (played by Naci Tasdögen), the most frustrated of the group, rapes her (while she is asleep!) and tries to cover it up with the other three, who sit mostly in a kitchen room, drinking, smoking hashish, and gorging on food. The dark part of Dostoevsky’s work, perhaps most succinctly found in Notes from the Underground (1864) – with his incredibly detailed and terrifyingly precise description of the totally malicious and self-destructive interior impulses to which human beings are prone and which, surrendering to them, make their own lives and those of others around them miserable and meaningless — may be found lurking on screen in these scenes. The man is caught in the act by his friend, Ali (Yildiray Sahinler), who, also with a lack of feeling for sexuality and the human person, promises not to report the Boxer’s activities to the captain if Boxer also allows him to take advantage of the girl. The sequence could not be more difficult to experience as a spectator as the montage connects the increasing violence of the two men with the pure excess and gluttony of the others, who remain ignorant of what is going on. Silence is pervasive when the violated woman is left all alone. Remorse is felt on part of the viewer. Voyeurism is an interesting factor here, as the viewer at first may experience joy at beholding her beauty only to have that beauty violated when she herself is violated.
The captain (Erkan Can), after some time of drunkenness, finds out about the actions of his two men. The captain, most often accompanied by his most trustworthy man Kamil (Haldun Boysan), then takes it upon himself to guard her, letting her sleep in his room (without access to the others, who may try to take advantage of her again), eat normally, and even watch television and play cards with the four of them. The situation slowly changes as she becomes one of the crew. They constantly plan to drop her back off in the city but each of the plans is either delayed or usurped by one of the men, acting out of fear or lust for the most part. The woman remains with them. While she is often objectified, she is central to the film’s development as her actions, although minimal, come to reflect in the conscience of the characters.
The men, especially the captain, realize her beauty; they realize their guilt and what it means keeping her hostage. They may even realize that it is their depravity, their physical distance and psychological estrangement from worldly contact and their inability to have healthy relations (even among themselves) that make them incapable of being married, having a family, or even having any meaningful relationship with a person of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, the men continue to act with animosity, unwilling to consciously recognize what they have done wrong or to act kindly. The aesthetic continues to be plagued by deep yellows and rich greys inside locked spaces, small cabins, and luncheons, contrasting with tinted blues of the deep sea threatening to swallow up the evil carried out on the freighter. The excavator on the ship digs into sand and constantly moves contents of the ship from one place to another, spilling material sometimes into the sea. It foreshadows (perhaps too obviously) the grim end that is likely to finish off such a dark palette.
The woman is stabbed in the back (following the character of chiseled melodrama that is only too rarely seen in Hitchcock and far too exaggerated in the Italian giallo). She falls and wriggles painfully. Even when stabbed she cannot die. The men surrounding her on different platforms around the main deck of the ship stand in shock, but they are unable to escape. We know that she will not die but the pain of their crime is not entirely put out as they leave her body to be picked up by police, interspersed with credits rolling; the body is discovered, taken, and they hide until the police leave. Their final act may subconsciously be a hint redemptive, but they still are too incapable — or more likely unwilling — to face up to their deeds. Breathing space, the way out from the small tunnel of such an existence brought out well by the film’s aesthetics and montage, is finally experienced in the end as the leading woman is released from her captors. At that point we are released. We can breathe again, for the first time since the beginning of the film.
There is a film directed by Kudret Sabanci and cowritten by Akar in the same year – A Madonna in Laleli (1998) – which takes place at the same time as the events of Gemide, with the characters from the two films crossing paths. The only difference is that the perspective of the film lies with the gang and the “pimps” with whom the girl associated before being kidnapped. That film, although providing some context, adds little in flavor to Gemide. The aesthetic is glitzy, fast, and colorful without measure, resembling the aesthetic of Turkish soap television. The men represented appear like caricatures, our leading lady in blue even less important and the portrayal far from sensitive or profound. The men who remain in that tunnel in Gemide, chained to their sins, did something human in granting freedom to the woman. A pathway out of their misery, however small, is opened when the credits roll. In Madonna,doors remain closed. There is a good comparative study waiting to be done on these films, but Akar’s work remains far more eloquent, as it relentlessly digs through the dark parts of human nature.
Author Biography
Mina Radovic is a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. A FIAF-trained archivist and filmmaker, he regularly contributes to international film and academic journals and runs the Liberating Cinema project. His research expertise is in film history and historiography, archiving and restoration, Yugoslav cinema, early cinema, language and ideology, and the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Film Details
Gemide (1998)
Turkey
Director Serdar Akar
Runtime 102 minutes
