Fratricide (2005)

Yilmaz Arslan’s Fratricide plays with different meanings of the word “brother”. First, there’s “brother” in the sense of blood relation. As the film begins, teenage Azad (Erdal Celik) leaves his parents in Turkish Kurdistan to join his older brother amongst the influx of Turkish immigrants in contemporary Germany. His brother is supposed to be prospering, and so, presumably, Azad will also find success in the West and send money (and honor) back home to his parents.

Then there’s “brother” in the sense of belonging to the same ethnic group. When he arrives in Germany, Azad begins to eke out a living as a bathroom barber, shaving fellow immigrants in the back of Kurdish-owned shops. As you would expect, there’s a whole network of camaraderie amongst the Kurds; they refer to one another as “brother”, solicit each other’s services, and help each other out.

There also the emotional sense of “brotherhood”; the bonds that can form between unrelated people that ultimately go much deeper than blood. Upon his arrival, Azad is dismayed to learn that his older brother’s much-vaunted prosperity is the result of pimping out a stable of bedraggled Russian hookers. Azad takes his own path; the two brothers are aware of one another, but barely interact. Instead, Azad bonds with another recent Kurdish refugee, the younger Ibo (Xevat Gectan), an orphan who has landed in Germany without friends, relatives, or contacts.

Azad takes Ibo on as his assistant, navigating him through the turbulent waters of their host country. Very soon, the two boys (who, despite the network of ethnic solidarity, are essentially adrift in their new home) are clinging to one another for support.

And lastly, and most, dangerously, there is the “brotherhood” that may or may not exist between Kurds and Turks. The film demonstrates that the homeland fractiousness between these two groups has not lessened in the new world. The entire plot is set into motion when Azad has the temerity to refer to a passing Turk as “brother” on the subway. The Turk, a strutting bully sporting a vicious pit bull, is enraged and vows revenge when Azad and Ibo manage to escape him.

Later, he runs into the two boys when they are arguing with Azad’s estranged brother, Semo (Nurretin Celik), on the street. The Turk attempts to attack Azad, Semo tries to defend him, and in the ensuing scuffle Semo kills the Turk. All three of them flee, but, in a plot twist that is glossed over, the authorities somehow catch up with Azad and Ibo and demand that they reveal who murdered the Turk. Azad, of course, refuses; he may not have even been on speaking terms with Semo, but his brother is still his brother and he will not betray him.

The rest of the film examines the ramifications of this choice and its’ effect on both Azad’s spiritual brother Ibo as well as his blood brother, Semo. Azad’s knowledge and refusal to speak bring him to the attention of the Turk’s equally bloodthirsty brother, Ahmet (Oral Uyan), who is willing to threaten the innocent Ibo in his quest to avenge his brother’s death.

Fratricide’s emotional intensity and graphic violence make it impossible not to have some effect on a viewer, but afterwards I’m not entirely sure what that effect is and what its value is. Chief amongst the film’s failings is its unrelentingly negative portrayal of the Turkish characters. I’m a little shocked that a film that claims to examine the nuances of ethnic conflict would portray an entire ethnic group in such a cartoonish light.

Both of the Turkish brothers are indistinguishable, snarling psychopaths; they’re the kinds of kinky, over-the-top villains James Woods might have played in an early-’90s action movie. We never get any insight into them as individuals or even as a people, and their briefly glimpsed parents are simply pushover stooges.

For that matter, Semo is not characterized with any depth, either. There’s no palpable fraternal connection between him and Azad; instead, we get scenes of Semo screaming at and beating his hookers. Perhaps this disconnect is intentional — to show the illusory nature of Azad and Semo’s “brotherhood” — but the end result is a film that pits two waifish innocents against a shrill, hostile world. The intended depiction of the cycle of violence in ancient conflicts devolves into an updated Gish sisters melodrama.

Fratricide’s horrific violence also raises issues. The initial murder scene climaxes with the Turk’s pit bull ripping the Turk’s intestines out of his stomach and devouring them. Later, when Ahmet has caught up with Azad and Ibo, he beats Azad senseless, then lets him watch as he sodomizes Ibo at gunpoint. And that’s not even mentioning the scenes of goat decapitation, throat cutting, and ear slicing.

Now, the representation of violence in film is a very tricky thing, and it’s difficult to say what is “gratuitous” and what’s not. On the one hand, the fact that the violence in Fratricide is deeply discomfiting may mean that it cuts through our anesthetized pop culture shell and really affects us (millions die in 300, for example, and no one flinches…) We live in a world in which horrific acts of violence occur every day that stem from the kind of ethnic conflicts Fratricide depicts, and we don’t see or hear enough about them.

But the violence in Fratricide didn’t fill me with moral horror or philosophical anxiety; it simply grossed me out. I could turn on some podiatric surgery on the Learning Channel and have the same aesthetic experience.

Ultimately, it’s the lingering quality of Arslan’s gaze that makes me question his motives; it’s the way the camera lingers on the pit bull slurping the intestines, or the way it captures every single thrust in the rape scene, and every snivel of the victimized little boy, that tips the scale into exploitation. This is compounded by the fact that these acts of violence are perpetrated by such underdeveloped, opaque characters; we feel the revulsion of violence, but that’s not a hard effect to achieve — it’s the lack of any larger understanding or insight beyond the awfulness of the brutality that rankles.

All that said — and setting aside Ibo’s heavy-handed narration and folk tale digressions — the film cannot be easily dismissed. It has a raw, brutish power that goes hand-in-hand with its more exploitive impulses. In this sense, it is reminiscent of Faith Akin’s Head On, another recent film that examined the Turkish experience in modern Germany through explosive emotions and extreme violence. That film grounded its excesses in deeply complex characters and a fully realized conflict, but if Azad and Ibo don’t have much depth, they are still impossible not to empathize with.

, ultimately, questions what the nature of brotherhood is. Azad thinks that by remaining silent he can be loyal to both his “brothers”, but the world is full of cross-purposes and Ahmet’s simultaneous desire to do right by his brother interferes with Azad’s attempts at neutrality. Ultimately, Azad has to choose between brothers –the “fratricide” of the title is, I think, the betrayal of one brother — and he naively believes this will end the cycle of violence. He’s wrong, of course, and the film doesn’t end, it stops. The cycle continues.

Aside from a trailer, there are no extras provided with this DVD.