Wild Pear Trees, Patrimonial Legacies: Father-Son Relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's The Wild Pear Tree

Coşkun Liktor

Abstract


This article analyzes the father-son relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film The Wild Pear Tree (2018), which tells the story of a son who desires a life as unlike his father’s narrow, provincial life as possible, only to find himself following in his father’s footsteps almost against his will. Drawing upon Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this article examines the film as an oedipal drama that portrays the predicament of a son who grapples with an ineffectual, humiliated father that fails to embody the paternal function. It undertakes to show how the father-son conflict eventually culminates in the father’s transformation from an object of contempt into an identificatory ideal for his son, who becomes heir to a legacy of disillusionment and thwarted hopes.


Keywords


Film; Cinema; Nuri Bilge Ceylan; The Wild Pear Tree; the Boredom of Provincial Life; Psychoanalysis; Oedipus Complex; Paternal Function; Paternal Imago; Jacques Lacan

Full Text:

PDF

References


Andrew, G. (2018). Return of the Native. Sight and Sound 28(12), 46-49.

Atam, Z. (2014). The Existential Boundaries of Nuri Bilge Ceylan: “In The Beginning Was The Father, Why Papa?”. In Akser, M. and D. Bayrakdar (Eds.) New Cinema, New Media: Reinventing Turkish Cinema, (67-91). Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Bloom, H. (1997). The Anxiety of Influence. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP.

Bowlby, R. (2007). Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Daldal, A. (2017). Ceylan's Winter Sleep: From Ambiguity to Nothingness. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 6(2), 181-199.

Diken, B., G. Gilloch and C. Hammond. (2018). The Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan: The Global Vision of a Turkish Filmmaker. London: I.B. Tauris.

Dönmez-Colin, G. (2014). The Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.

Ebiri, B. (2018). “‘The Wild Pear Tree’: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Gets Personal.” The Village Voice, May 21, https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/05/21/the-wild-pear-tree-nuri-bilge-ceylan-gets-personal/, accessed 7 March 2019.

Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge.

Freud, S. (2001a). Totem and Taboo. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 13, 1913-1914, (1-162). London: Vintage.

Freud, Sigmund. (2001b). “Civilization and Its Discontents.” In J. Strachey (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund

Freud Vol. 21, 1927-1931, (64-145). London: Vintage.

Freud, S. (2001c). “The Future of an Illusion.” In J. Strachey (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 21, 1927-1931, (1-56). London: Vintage.

Freud, S. (2001d). “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.” In J. Strachey (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 22, 1932-1936, (5-182). London: Vintage.

Gilbert, S. M., & Gubar, S. (2020). The madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. Veritas Paperbacks.

Kara, F. M., & Eşitti, Ş. (2017). Women in the Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 6(2), 200-221.

Lacan, J. (2001a). The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis. In Ecrits: A Selection, tr. A. Sheridan, (23-86). London and New York: Routledge.

Lacan, J. (2001b). The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious. In Ecrits: A Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan, (223-249). London and New York: Routledge.

Lacan, J. (1991). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 1, Freud’s Paper’s On Technique 1953-1954. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Lacan, J. (1995). The Oedipus Complex. In F. Peraldi (Ed.), Polysexuality, (190-200). New York: Semiotext(e).

Lacan, J. (1997). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 3, The Psychoses 1955-1956. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Lebeau, V. (1995). Lost Angels: Psychoanalysis and Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.

McGowan, T. (2004). The End of Dissatisfaction? Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Pamuk, O. (2002). The Red-haired Woman: A Novel. Vintage.

Raup, J. (2016). “‘Winter Sleep’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan Reveals Next Feature.” The Film Stage, September 28, 2016, https://thefilmstage.com/news/winter-sleep-and-once-upon-a-time-in-anatolia-director-nuri-bilge-ceylan-reveals-next-feature, accessed 6 March 2019.

Suner, A. (2010). New Turkish Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris.

Verhaeghe, Paul. (2000). The Collapse of the Function of the Father and Its Effect on Gender Roles. In R. Salecl (Ed.), Sexuation, (131-154). Durham and London: Duke UP.

Zepf, S., F. D. Zepf, B. Ullrich and D. Seel. (2017). Oedipus and the Oedipus Complex: A Revision. London: Karnac.

Zizek, S. (2000). The Ticklish Subject. London and New York: Verso.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2019.233

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Copyright (c) 2020 Coşkun Liktor

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This journal is published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. 

ISSN 2159-2411 (print) 2158-8724 (online)