It all starts with a photo

Time to Love is a Turkish movie by Metin Erksan which I recently saw on MUBI. The movie was restored in 4K by MUBI and is a movie which is based on a folk tale where a person falls in love with a photograph. Well the end is something which I would not like to reveal.

In the movie, a simple painter falls in love with a photograph but he does not want to fall in love with the person. The girl who is very rich & does not believe in love at first sight falls in love with the man seeing her love and throughout the movie tries to win her love. The reason given by the painter is very insightful: he says “the photograph will always love me because her gaze won’t change but your love will change with time, you may not like my shabby look some day or the fact that I live hand to mouth and exist on contracts”. 

Reflecting on it I realise why we build a platonic / spiritual relationship with authors, directors / painters through the objects created by them. Or, maybe it is the character like Potter or Arya Stark of GOT or Holmes with whom we build that relationship - the insight is the same, they don’t talk back, the acceptance or rejection is in our hand. But in a physical relationship it’s a 2 way street and yes people do change & I am not surprised when someone says “How did I live with him for the last 15 years?”.

This also takes me back 23 years when my marriage proposals started coming in, in the form of photographs and ultimately one of those photo’s led to my marriage - 2 kids. And yes both of us have changed over these years but we have also learnt to live and let live with each other.

Time to love is a B/W gem where apart from the actors the landscapes which is essentially the Princes island across Istanbul, the turbulent sea, lakes, rain play and music play an important role in making this movie seem more like a photo essay where every shot looks like sketched and shot. This was made in 1964 so it’s all real, no effects. This is again one of the movies where you can just switch off the dialogue and see the movie & soundtrack and you can see it endlessly.

Postscript:

Isles of Passion on Notebook | MUBI