Pandora's Box

A film by Yeşim Ustaoğlu

Two sisters and a brother live in the centre of contemporary İstanbul. They are in their thirties and forties, and lead very different lives, self-centred with their upper middle class preoccupations. One day, a phone call brings them together on a voyage through Turkey's suburbs and villages to the small town in the Black Sea mountains where they were born. Their ageing mother, Nusret, has disappeared. As the siblings start reminiscing about her, the tensions between them quickly become apparent, like a Pandora's box which is spilled open, scattering all the unresolved disputes, and opening up old wounds again.

When they find their mother and bring her to İstanbul they soon understand that she is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and the confrontation with Nusret's condition makes them realise how poor their own lives are. It is only Nesrin's rebellious son Murat who empathises with Nusret, sneaking her out of the institution where her daughters have committed her, and leading his grandmother back to her home in the mountains to which she is desperate to return.

The story begins with everyday life in central İstanbul, a city in which the very modern and the very traditional are completely intertwined. It then continues as the journey of three people to the western part of the Black Sea region, characterised by coal mining and a working class way of life. This journey becomes an inner journey where each of the three siblings must confront the conflicts, long buried in their subconscious, and accept the reality of themselves.

The dramatic structure of the story delves into the inner worlds of the individuals and is reinforced by the landscape images that pass by them, mirroring their psychological states. As the images of their journey in the external world begin to change from the large metropolitan city to the desolate country landscapes, with details of ordinary but innocent smaller lives in the countryside, it is these details that lead the characters to unravel the problems that they have always tried to cover up.

Yeşim Ustaoğlu, the director of Pandora'nın Kutusu, describes her award-winning feature as a story of alienation and isolation. It is a story of individuals whose lives have been shaped by a sterile, middle class morality, a story that many people touched by the inevitable combination of capitalism and modernity can identify with. It is a kind of human landscape, both universal and singular at the same time.