Film Review: Anatolian Leopard (2021)
Uğur Polat in Anatolian Leopard (2021)
Written by Belle McIntyre
This moody, elegiac winner of the prestigious FIPRESCI Jury Award at TIFF, centers on the planned closing of Turkey’s oldest zoo. The poetic decrepitude of the old zoo, a victim of years of neglect is dramatically presented against the new project being proposed by Arab developers. Most of the animals are being crated and relocated to make way for Aladdin’s Magic Lamp, a tacky neon amusement park which is being eagerly awaited by the Turkish business community as a boost for the economy.
Those who work at the zoo seem resigned to the vicissitudes of urban development and their inability to stop it. But, when a way to thwart the project
appears by chance, they all find ways to coalesce into their own individual acts of anarchic resistance. The key to it all is the highly prized Anatolian Leopard, Hercules, who has been designated one of Turkey’s national treasures and requires a daunting list of conditions for his appropriate housing. Fikret Ozturk (Ugur Polat), the zoo’s director for years is a handsome craggy-featured man who looks as if he has the troubles of the world on his mind. He says little and his face betrays no emotion and yet he is a magnetic screen presence. He goes through life not making waves and addresses his existential condition as a feeling that the flow of life is going around him and passing him by. He is surely a solitary man, with an ex-wife and a violinist daughter with whom he seems estranged and a few male friends with whom he remains detached.
When the Anatolian Leopard mysteriously disappears, all hell breaks loose, and the spotlight focus on those quiet zoo employees, who suddenly become suspects. The characters are a mixed bag, including the mousy Gamze, head of zoo security, who has repressed aspirations to become an airline hostess. Ibrahim, the slow-witted giant who was the dedicated minder of Hercules, is inconsolable about the future without Hercules and makes emphatic promises that he will never take his consolation job as the hippopotamus minder.
I cannot reveal the actual events which occurred regarding the leopard’s disappearance, but suffice it to say, that the zoo employees really rise to the occasion and, without prompting, do all manner of over-the-top obstruction with dead-pan demeanors. Imagine the screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby” without the screwball overacting. This film is the definition of droll yet the characters come across and leave their impression. The story gets impossibly convoluted as these amateur conspirators get tangled in a web of circumstances beyond their control. The unravelling of the mystery at the end reminded me of the denoument in the film Casablanca when Capt. Renault (Claude Rains) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) recognize that punishment is not always the best solution.
The desaturated palette evokes the faded antiquity of Turkey and addresses the loss of heritage happening worldwide in our rush to modernization and commercialization. Also evoked is the Kafkaesque aspect of so many bureaucratic environments which dehumanize individuals. This film elevates the quirky characters in their own particularities. It is a melancholy and simultaneously uplifting and empathetic look at the human condition. It will stay with you in a good way.
İpek Türktan and Uğur Polat in Anatolian Leopard (2021)
