Love is an Ideal
Metin Erksan’s masterpiece Time to Love (1965) conveys both heartache and metaphysical angst, creating a haunting film
Halil (Müsfik Kenter), a humble painter, lets himself into someone’s holiday home every afternoon. He often stays overnight, where he sits in a chair and smokes cigarettes, mesmerised by a picture of a beautiful woman, Meral (Sema Özcan). When Meral catches him in the act, his illicit and sacred love becomes exponentially more complicated: she becomes infatuated with him, too.
Whereas this would usually serve as the resolution to most love stories, Halil realises that the situation is complex; he loves the photo, not the woman photographed. The photograph gazes upon him endlessly with kindness and affection: this interminable acceptance will never change. As a poor man, he could realistically never hope to kindle such a real relationship with Meral, who has grown up in a wealthy family. Through his certainty that their relationship would end in miserable failure, with his hallowed love for the photograph being defiled in the process, Halil spurns Meral out of fear. But their intense feelings for one another continue to bring them together.
In Metin Erksan’s masterpiece, he is transfixed with the notion that love is an ideal, one that is threatened by the chaos and complexities of real world relationships. Although we may often feel overwhelmed by the boundless nature of love, we struggle to keep the abstract concept unmarred by the unavoidable pitfalls that exist outside of the metaphysical realm. He appears to ask his audience: should one settle for the flawed, warm love of real relationships, or dedicate oneself to the cold, isolated perfection of romantic idealism? Time to Love (1965) offers a philosophical look at intimacy and attachment, providing a haunting portrayal of the many challenges relationships are faced with in the real world.
In watching the film unfold, one can immediately notice the prevalence of Plato’s philosophy in the story. Particularly, his theory of Forms resembles Halil’s preoccupation with his inviolable love for Meral’s photograph. In this philosophical thesis, Plato espouses the view that our real world is actually illusory. In a different plane of being, one that precedes our own, there exists the true realm where Ideal Forms of all things (like a dog, a table, or a human) dwell. We are born with the knowledge of these Forms etched into our mind, so we may recognise their Earthly imitations, but we understand that they are imperfect replicas.
Plato not only believed in ideal Forms for concrete, tangible things, but for abstract concepts as well, such as justice, goodness, and presumably, love. His theory of Forms is best described in his Allegory of the Cave. The Greek philosopher asks us to imagine a group of people who have grown up inside a dark cave, chained to a wall. Shadows dance on the wall before them and they come to know these shadows as true objects. However, unbeknownst to them, there are free people behind the prisoners who are casting shadows as they walk past a bright fire. The extent of the prisoners’ knowledge is limited to that of a shadow. In fact, if they were to be shown the truth of the real world, they would dispel it, thinking it to be false; the world of silhouettes is all they know.
In Time to Love, Halil is convinced that Meral’s attempt to foster a human relationship between them is like the shadows on the wall: illusory and unobtainable. In Halil’s mind, love is an ideal, perfectly captured by the photograph of Meral. Any mortal means of imitating it would pale in comparison to the ceaseless adoration the photograph gives to him. Though Meral is well-intentioned, Halil is aware that, in the real world, all good things fall apart.
In this respect, Erksan’s romance drama could also be seen as a cinematic adjunct to John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819). Much like Halil, Keats was concerned with the interrelation between ideal realms and our worldly limitations. Terrified of death and the passing of time, much of Keats’ poetry reflects a concern with decay and our transient, inconstant nature. Keats gazes upon this ancient Greek urn that depicts two lovers in ecstatic chase and asks himself: which is to be more desired? The unchangeable, yet lifeless embrace, or the ever-changing, living romance?
It is a conundrum that Keats never fully settles. Though he envies their perdurable nature, he is aware that the fulfilment of their desire escapes them: “She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” This directly mirrors Halil’s quandary. He could bask in the loving gaze of the photograph until the end of his days and he would never experience the sting of rejection. Or, he could accept Meral’s advances and feel the depths of true, human love, with all of its many complications.
In both Erksan’s film and Keats’ poem, there is a similar paradox prevalent throughout the works. Both Halil and Keats (as narrator in the poem) imbue their art work with feeling and emotion, despite the fact they are lifeless objects. The romantic poet describes a tree that will never wither and die with the passing of years; instead, it will remain in springtime forevermore, in uninterrupted blossom: “Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.” Describing a cold piece of ceramic in terms of its vivaciousness and vitality is, though stimulating, ultimately contradictory. Similarly, Halil describes the photograph as having a warm, affectionate gaze, despite the fact he is engaging in a parasocial relationship with an inanimate object.
It is this contradiction that ails the two men. Both Halil and Keats long for permanence. Both of them are painfully aware that it is woefully lacking in the real world. However, they still crave human affection, creating a dilemma. As a result, they indulge themselves with escapism in an attempt to capture the ideal of love. Interestingly, Plato narrowly evades such a paradox by supposing that a human being is divided into two parts: the body and the soul. In The Republic, Plato writes: “The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.”
By separating us into two distinct components, Plato’s dichotomy adroitly delineates where Earthly pleasures end and sacrosanct ideals begin. Our souls were once a part of the world of Forms, which is why we have ideas as to how certain things should look. When we die, our souls would return to the realm of Forms. Halil’s body and mind may yearn for Meral, but his soul is sustained by the everlasting photograph: it is his personal “bride of quietness”, a transcendental portal into the realm of ideals. It holds his adoration. Meanwhile, the material world is volatile and in constant flux – how could he responsibly put a precious thing like love into such a world?
Of course, all of this depends on our perspective: which way are we looking? If Metin Erksan was intentionally incorporating Platonic philosophy into his film, then one particular shot can be seen to challenge Halil’s worldview. The first time Meral and Halil meet, Halil is staring at her picture as Meral walks up behind him. In other words, he is the prisoner looking at the illusion, while the real thing stands behind him. Halil’s ideal of love is the delusory shadow, something he realises too late.
Erksan connects this metaphysical intrigue to social issues in a fantastic way. After all, the central theme in Time to Love is that of doomed love amidst class struggle: Halil knows that he will never be able to provide a luxurious life for Meral. Much like the shapes on the wall, the life of a poor man is all he knows and probably ever will. Halil is so destitute that he doesn’t even have a mantle on which to hang the portrait of his idol – he balances it above his fire, so that he may gaze at it longingly in the cold, wintry nights.
The real world presents obstacles which anyone in a relationship must face. Erksan seems to ask us: is it healthy to live in a self-imposed deception, with attachment to an abstract ideal which will never challenge us? With this philosophical undercurrent to the film, Erksan provides genuine drama and tragedy by drawing on societal ills.
Time to Love has recently been restored by Mubi, providing audiences the opportunity to watch a masterwork that originally didn’t even have a distributor. It can be seen to have influenced modern romance-tragedies, such as Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War (2018), as well as potentially having inspired classic films like Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1975). Scorsese has been heavily involved in Mubi’s restoration projects, and with Erksan’s Dry Summer (1963) being one of his favourite films, it seems reasonable to suggest there’s a link.
Through haunting cinematography, Erksan provides a contemplative look at the inner workings of relationships, while also analysing what love, loneliness, and ineptitude can do to a person’s soul. The story suggests that our aspirations to capture ideals must be cast aside if we are ever to obtain true, Earthly affection. Love may be an ideal that we hold in our hearts and enriches the soul, but ideals fall apart when they enter the mortal realm. For this reason, Halil slowly acquiesces to accept our worldly limitations: despite the unpredictable nature of the world, it is better to embrace it than to live an entire life in fear. Finally, he realises that it is high time to love.
