“You’re alone. Nothing happens to men like us because we live from day to day, “a Chechen immigrant tells homeless Syrian children in Istanbul in Deviated. Nomadic stocks without roots and hand in hand are at the heart of Elizabeth Lo’s documentary director / producer / editor / director of photography, but humans are simply the peripheral actors in this impressive non-fiction research, which really teaches the his gaze on some of the endless canines that roam the streets of the city. A 2016 spiritual accompaniment piece by Ceyda Torun Gat (which referred to the legions of cats that inhabited this same metropolis), Lo’s film reveals the secret life of dogs. In doing so, he draws strong parallels between his world and ours, and our shared desires for sustenance, comfort, and companionship.
After a 20th century, in which the authorities tried to exterminate the animals (causing mass killings), widespread protests have transformed the city into one of the few places on the planet where it is illegal to euthanize and keep captive any stray dog, ie virtually all the sidewalks, in all the alleys and near every rubbish bin, the canines congregate looking for food, fighting, bothering and trying to survive. Hers is an unromantic situation, though not without pleasures, and Lo’s camera assumes her perspective all the time, holding a low position to the ground as she follows these poochs back and forth, down bustling sidewalks where people barely warn them, across the streets. where cars stop to let them pass, and on beaches where they are free to run, play and spin and, from time to time, corner and squabble against unknown intruders.
Deviated he focuses his attention on a trio of dogs, starting with Zeytin, who has a striking brown coloration and large, painful eyes that are as expressive as his movements through the different districts of Istanbul are casual. With a sometimes torn expression on his right face and ear that falls slightly lower than his left, Zeytin is a native inhabitant of this urban landscape, equally at ease on its well-paved sidewalks, in the parks there next to busy roads and steep stretches of mountainous terrain decorated with giant rock outcrops and ruins of buildings whose columns still remain. Zeytin is confident that it makes her a perfect guide to this environment, as well as making her popular with locals, many of whom know her by name. This includes a collection of young Syrian migrants living on the street and, we learn courtesy of random conversation snippets, are known to sniff tail and are constantly threatened with arrest by authorities.
Zeytin will soon mate Deviated with the friendly Nazar and the black and white puppy Kartal, the latter is taken into the care of Syrian children after asking a local man for one of his many wanderings, and he accepts this by telling them that they can return at night and steal a for them. The similarities between Istanbul’s dog and refugee population are not hard to discern, and Director Lo does not put these echoes in italics or force, but allows them to materialize from the ongoing procedure. Through careful selection and juxtaposition of scenes, he analyzes the struggle for subsistence between animals and children, their territorial disputes with others (whether with other dogs or tourists and police who prefer to keep the streets free of homeless youth) , and her longing for love, or at least a warm body with which to embrace under a blanket at night.
He is divided by his film with textual quotations about the nobility of dogs (mainly by the Greek philosopher Diogenes, around 300 BC), but otherwise avoids the obvious comments. Even human voices Deviated they are only heard in fragments and sometimes through distorted audio that wants to mimic the way Zeytin, Nazar, and Kartal might experience them. These pieces of dialogue are sometimes comical (such as comments about two dogs screwing up during a march for women’s rights), sometimes political (such as when men discuss whether to vote for the Nationalist Movement Party), and sometimes , are as normal as a garbage truck. operator who punishes Nazar for not sharing a fleshy bone found in the trash with Zeytin. These comments are generally antecedent, but nevertheless remain a key component of Lo’s observational examination of the urgent concerns of Turkish society, the fissures, and the treatment of people living on its margins.
Deviated it is more evocative when it simply trots alongside or behind its canine protagonists, capturing (and subtly mimicking) the influence of their bodies, the pace of their gait, the curiosity of their eyes, and the potential cruelty of their circumstances, fact transmitted. by a sterling sequence in which Lo’s camera runs after Zeytin down a night street, almost losing sight of it, only to have the euphoria of the moment (amplified by Ali Helnwein’s string score) interrupted by a sudden outbreak of violence between dogs suffocated by Syrian children. At this point, the film recognizes the scant division between happiness and brutality that defines the daily situation of these dogs, as well as the sound design (courtesy of Leviathan i Sweetgrass‘Ernst Karel) duplicates the swirling combination of noises (birds ciphering, honking car horns, disembodied chatter) surrounding them as they meander from a dilapidated construction site to the storefront to the gray shipyard.
BUILT-IN
The portrait of these bewildered dogs by Lo is often melancholy, especially when it comes to Kartal, the acclimatization to these so strong terrains that he seems to tread seems, by the look in his eyes, to inspire a significant degree of trepidation. However, there are also moments of fun yeast, such as when Zeytin stumbles upon a cat hiding in a row of bushes in the park and, suddenly encouraged by this discovery, chases him immediately. Deviated he does not shy away from the good or the bad, documenting his four-legged subjects as they jump, crawl, run, fight, fight, gnaw, sleep, and seek protection, food, and rest. The more he observes them, the deeper he delves into the universality of his experience, all without losing sight of the singularity of his character and situation.
With a perceptive neorealist grace, Deviated let your dogs ’actions in the face of abandonment, neglect, and abuse speak volumes about their resilience and benevolence, their ferocity, and their compassion. In doing so, the film also says a lot about the men and women who are willing to lend a hand to the less fortunate, and also about those who turn a blind eye to the creatures that need it.