In its first 10 minutes, When We Leave enters dangerous waters. There are allusions to murder, rape, abortion, and child abuse. But listing them all out like that makes the movie sound like a cheap catharsis at best and an emotional disaster flick at worst. And it doesn’t help that the premise — a Turkish-German woman, who leaves her husband in Istanbul and moves home to Berlin, struggles to free herself from the repressive strictures of her traditional family without sacrificing their respect and love in the process — doesn’t attract moviegoers looking for a dose of lightness and grace. But once you’ve sat through its weighty exposition and accept the gravity of its premise, When We Leave proves itself to deal in true pathos, not false pity.
The story was inspired by the 2005 killing of Hatun Sürücü, which brought the issue of honor crimes in Muslim communities into the European spotlight. In connection with her work for Amnesty International, writer, director, and producer Feo Aladag became especially concerned with the universal and transnational implications of such crimes. This film was born of her subsequent research into the social mechanisms that foster and endorse similar acts of violence. Immigrant’s rights, women’s rights, and the continually strained dialogue between Islam and the secular world are thus written all over the film’s 119 minutes. Thankfully, Aladag has a talent for understatement, and she directs a multi-faceted cast, including the stunning Sibel Kekilli. The result is a quiet but urgent reflection on the value of family, the inevitability of loss, and the cost of progress.
As Umay (Kekilli) goes through each stage of her journey toward independence, she engages in a sort of internal negotiation with the cultures that pull her apart. She is gradually disillusioned of her faith in her family’s acceptance, and she begins to embrace more openly the country and the people that protect her when her social community will not. Subtle choices between languages — Umay alternates between Turkish and German for most of the movie — and the unobtrusive cast of Germans that support Umay with increasing conviction frame the central struggle between her and her family. These structural devices clarify exactly what is at stake for Umay and her son, as she is forced to choose between emotional and physical security.
It is easy to get swept away as her inner conflict begins to look more and more one-sided, and her neglected plea for acceptance begins to look more like a cause for alarm. Indeed, by the film’s astonishing climax, the audience is very nearly on the edge of their seats with desperation for Umay to escape. Aladag never vilifies the family, though, and neither does Umay. She never stops believing in them, even as she contemplates leaving them behind for good. Strong performances from Settar Tanriögen (as her father Kader) and Serhad Can (her younger brother Acar) also do a great deal to humanize the hatred that overflows from the film’s confrontations.
And so, at the movie’s close, it is hard to assign those white and black hats that American audiences are so fond of. The darker motives and larger truths that underlie the film’s events remain obscure to the very end. But the key to the integrity of When We Leave, the amulet that keeps away the tinge of the ‘story with a message,’ is that such uncertainty is the point. Umay and her family must struggle with the same sense of futility felt by the viewer. Her German friends and supporters, though sympathetic, offer no easy answers. Under Kekilli and Aladag’s steady guidance, what might have been a disaster of frustrated ambitions is instead a tragedy of misunderstanding.
