“I saw your father last night in my dreams,” Hazar (Hazar Ergüçlü) tells her husband Ali (Ekin Koç) in the opening moments of “The Things You Kill,” an unwelcome presence in her mind as much as one in Ali’s life generally when the two have had a strained relationship for some time. After Hazar relates how she imagined Hamit (Ercan Kesal) knocking at their door and refusing to go away, all Ali can think about is going to visit his ailing mother Sakine who still has to live with him, finding that the plumbing in the house are severely in need of an upgrade that his father won’t pay for. The dereliction of duty seems especially galling when Ali would like to be a father himself, only to find that he may not have the sperm count for it and when his mother turns up dead, which reasonably could be chalked up to her poor health in general yet seems as if she also might’ve been a casualty of her surroundings, his anger towards Hamit threatens to get the best of him.
Ever since writer/director Alireza Khatami first made a splash with his debut “Oblivion Verses” set in Spain where a morgue was besieged by a sudden influx of corpses with its caretaker concerned with where they were coming from, the characters in his films have been haunted by things that undoubtedly have an impact on them yet they can’t often be dealt with directly and his latest ingeniously tackles the passage of toxic masculinity from one generation to the next when Ali wants nothing from his father, but has likely inherited his anger. When Hamit is introduced into “The Things You Kill” via Hazar’s dream, the rest becomes a waking nightmare for Ali who reluctantly involves his recently hired gardener Reza (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil) in plans to avenge his mother’s death and it becomes difficult to discern him either from the father he loathes or, in a quite literal way, from Reza as none of the men look different from one another as they act on their worst impulses.
The subject may feel crushing on the surface as Khatami contends with the insidious nature of a patriarchal society invading both its furthest reaches geographically and intimately, but as he has done before, brings so much bravado to the proceedings that it’s all but impossible not to be swept up in such galvanizing cinema. Making a point of moving from one country to another for each film he’s made, the filmmaker has brought down borders while exposing them as they exist on both a personal and international level for characters attempting to escape from the confines of cultures that they had no hand in shaping themselves but hope to play some small role in changing for the future. In that same spirit of transcending national identity, even though “The Things You Kill” is set in Turkey, it was recently selected as Canada’s official entry to the Oscars for Best International Feature (where Khatami makes his home) and on the eve of the film’s release in the States following its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, the director graciously took the time to talk about his creative process, finding such an impressive and tactile take on an abstract issue and the rewards of taking risks.
From the characters’ names Ali and Reza, I suspect this came from a personal place, but how did this all come about as a story for you?
It’s very much based on personal stories and tragedies that happened to me and my family – to that point that I don’t want to show it to my family. I had to change parts of it and experiment with the narrative. But I took those personal narratives and because I had to fit it into this rectangular silver screen, I wanted to make a cohesive piece and take my personal pain to speak to a broader themes. [such as] the patriarchy and the structure that it builds, and then how [both] men and women become the victim and subject to that violence. We have seen women being subjected to it and the consequences of that rightfully. But we rarely look at what it does to the men in the society.
Formally, it’s quite daring and you’ve said in previous interviews there was a creative breakthrough on this as far as being a storyteller. What was it that crystallized, if you can articulate it?
At heart, I’m a mischievous person. I’m playful and I love, love, love cinema, so as I’m writing, I always look for ways to tell it in a fresh way and go to places that I’m afraid of. The first version I wrote, the shift [that becomes the pivotal moment in the film] wasn’t happening. And a friend of suggested, “What if you shifted [the characters]?” And that clicked for me that in cinema, in the story of doppelgangers, it’s one person imagining the other one and through a series of flashbacks, we explained that, “Oh, this didn’t exist, like ‘Fight Club.’” Edward Norton goes through the story and in flashbacks, Brad Pitt never existed. [But I thought] What if Brad Pitt had same agency? That was the point for me. And we had seen this to some extent being played by folks like Bunuel and David Lynch, so I thought, “If I stand on their shoulders, I can pull this off. Right?” So I made both characters completely different actors, with even different ways of performing so that the audience doesn’t suspect anything and right in the middle, I pull the rug from beneath them and give them this 10-second, 20-second sense of disorientation and let them fight their way to the film and halfway through, I have given them enough in the first half that they cannot leave. This was exhilarating to me. I love seeing movies that tell me let’s go to places that you haven’t been yet.
How you handle the duality of the characters is so exciting visually, as well as the landscape. Was it interesting to develop the aesthetics of this?
It was from the get-go. In cinema, again, when we want to talk about self-reflection, we take it to a confined place and [usually] to a dark place. But what if we reverse it? Let’s take it to an open, vast space where you feel lonely. Because when I reflect, that’s how I feel. This is my shit and nobody else can reach out and help me. It’s me and me and alone in this vast landscape of thoughts. So then with my cinematographer, we made a plan that every time it’s Ali, we’re going to be static or on a dolly. Every time it’s Reza, we’re going to be handheld. all the way to the end of second act when Ali overcomes [Reza]. Then he’s a complete person. Now, if needs to be [more Ali], we’ll be static. If needs to be [more Reza], we’ll be handheld and the camera language evolved with him to the point that sometimes when the characters are blurred in their minds, we are out of focus too, so there was a very organic connection between the camera and the characters in front to make this cohesive piece.
I’ve loved the pacing in all your movies, and of course that may be part of the editing, but how much you’re thinking about it up front in terms of how this will unfold?
I always have made movies on shoestring budgets, so I’ve learned to edit before the shoot. I have to know exactly how this is going to sit on the timeline because I don’t have time to do coverage, so I have to be very clear and confident about the pace before shooting it and I pretty much know exactly how this is going to play. I really edit it in my head. And it helps the actors and crew a lot for because we don’t shoot things that we throw out. I don’t know how it is to shoot a lot and then go figure things out in the editing room. I’ve learned to edit like a dancer – I have to really be on my toes. And then one, two, three, I press. Is it cutting right at that last time I tried it? If I come to the same cutting point three times, it means that’s the place. So I did with my guts more than with my head after the dance to the rhythm of the film. That’s the music of the film to me, and I don’t use music in my films, by the way, because to me, the music is the inner pace and also the symphony of these diegetic or non-diegetic sounds that are in the film.
All of these films have worked universally, but when you’re going to different countries to film them, do you adapt them at all to the culture that you’re setting the production in?
Absolutely, a lot of adaptation. Because of my past, I’ve been in exile for more than two decades [from Iran], moving between cultures, languages, countries, visas, and legal systems and I always have looked for people who adopt me and my stories, but I don’t take my stories and tell them to tell this one. I tell them, “Here is a pain and here is how I have put a band-aid on that pain. Let’s open it together and you show me how you adapt that pain. How do you take care of that pain?” I don’t go like a National Geography photographer to take some good-looking photos and put it on magazines.
From what I understand, there were certain scenes in this where you had an idea for a scene but would tinker it with the input of the cast up until the day of filming. Was there anything that came out that you might not have expected, but was something that you now really like about the film?
There was one scene that we didn’t know how to shoot and that was the confession [of Ali to what he’s done to his wife]. It’s very personal. Ekin Koç is a very wonderful actor, but he was nervous about how we are going to do this. And I [told him], “I don’t know, really,” and even to the point that we are on the set, we didn’t know exactly how [it would play]. And as he sat in front of the camera, I wanted to be right in front of him and I didn’t want to play tricks. This is an honest moment. I wanted to be honest with him and to be there for him. But as we set up the camera, he leaned forward a little bit. And I saw in the monitor that his eyes are out of focus. And I thought that’s beautiful. This out of focus gives him a dignity that we cannot see his eyes when he’s doing this confession. And as he’s mustering the courage to tell this story, he’s connecting how this story has affected him – this is the first time [his character] also saw his mother. This is the root of his fear. [He can finally ask] Why did you leave? And so I didn’t put him out of focus. He leans forward out of focus. And when it comes to clarity, I honored that and I pulled focus. That became a merging of the camera and the actor together to create this performance.
There was a lot of fear that people will think this is a mistake, nobody has done this. In the movie “The Graduate,” there is a version of it, and works beautifully, so here it’s so intentional and it so fits the moment that 30 seconds out of focus, why not? Let’s push it. I’m very, very proud of that scene because it gives him a dignity and also a clarity at the same time. And the camera and the actor become one, which I love.
This has been an eight-year journey for you and it seems like a lot to get off your shoulders. What’s it’s been like to get out there and share with audiences so far.
It was very emotional to open myself and spill my guts in this way in cinema, so it has been a painful but also a very rewarding experience that I think finally I find out what cinema is and what it can do with this movie. I cannot watch the film myself that often. It’s still very painful for me, but audiences have come to me with responses that I’ve been humbled by. I thought we were taking a lot of risks that would alienate people, but actually people have connected to film in ways I did not expect, and I’m grateful for that, and I’m very lucky.
“The Things You Kill” opens on November 14th in New York at the IPic Fulton Market and November 21st in Los Angeles at the Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall.