Stress and the Dam

Growing crops in a desert is hard enough before some bastard cuts off the water supply. This is the situation in 1964's Dry Summer(Susuz Yaz). When a cartoonishly selfish man decides all the water belongs to him because the well's on his property no-one else can irrigate their fields without his permission in this fascinating melodrama.

Osman (Erol Taş) builds a dam to stop the water flowing off his property. His younger brother, Hasan (Ulvi Dogan), objects but can't overrule his elder.

Meanwhile, Hasan routinely steals away to make time with the lovely Bahar (Hülya Koçyiğit), a 19 year old daughter of a nearby widow. Osman pushes Hasan into marrying Bahar sooner than either really feels comfortable with and it becomes clear Osman has his own reasons for wanting Bahar around the house, cooking and doing other chores.

When Hasan goes to prison for a crime Osman committed, you start to wonder how long everyone is going to let Osman keep getting away with this shit. But legal and cultural obstacles present themselves. Once Bahar finds herself living alone with the disgusting tyrant, it seems like it's only a matter of time before he forces himself on her. But she proves to have plenty of fight in her. Still, the conflict mostly stays under the surface as both sides get in their underhanded blows--one day Bahar destroys the dam, one day Osman forces her to climb a ladder so he can look up her skirt.

The suspense builds nicely and director Metin Erksan does a good job coming up with shots that convey the emotional states of the characters, from sweaty closeups to dizzy angles.

Dry Summer is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1457

With candid lines we drew misfortune's face.
The speaking crowd adopts a lingual dog.
As fighter jets, the pigeons knew a grace.
The bigger birds could swallow heaps of fog.
A drop of rain replaced a cloud at night.
With lousy aim, cicadas scream and sleep.
The bottled coffee waits beside the light.
The swimmers couldn't swim the java deep.
The dusty river carries dogs and chicks.
The table's set with heated steel and rust.
Mistaken streets would foster strings and bricks.
With stacks of books the doctor garners trust.
The fisher flexed her wings to cool the air.
The leaves were flying up the granite stair.