![]() They already don’t want to listen to her diagnoses, why would they listen to her when she says there was no intent to injure in her actions? Suddenly all the people who saw each other out that night are as much each other’s alibi as each other’s executioner. Just as she can’t trust those around her to not be the cause, however, she can’t trust them not to turn on her if she was. Snow and the Bear is structured in such a way that even Asli could be the reason Hasan disappeared. What’s great about Ergun’s pressure cooker in sub-zero temperatures is that she shouldn’t be able to pretend she’s innocent either. She cannot afford to pretend any of them is innocent. She’s theoretically an objective observer-except, of course, she’s also a woman. The result is thus a tense escalation of danger with Asli caught in the middle. But anyone telling you we live in one is lying. Shouldn’t “accident” be the top assumption, though? Shouldn’t everyone be innocent until proven guilty? In a perfect world, maybe. Did he abandon his family again? Did Samet murder him after an escalation of their rift? Did the other bear whispers have been saying is coming near enact revenge for the murder of its kin? Every conclusion imaginable is put on the table each one is feasible depending on who you ask. When Hasan goes missing, the rumor mill accordingly swirls. Samet turned Hasan in when he killed a bear because they’re protected by the government. He attempts to even facilitate a truce between those other two after a tricky situation causes the neighborhood to mistrust each other. She’s in foreign territory.Ĭan she trust Hasan? The womanizer who “knows what’s best” when making his pregnant wife (Asiye Dinçsoy’s Cemile), who’s prescribed bedrest so as not to lose the baby or her own life, work the shop on her feet? How about Samet (Saygın Soysal)? The kind soul everyone treats like a simpleton who’s never far away when Asli needs assistance? Mahmut (Muttalip Müjdeci) proves the likeliest ally as de facto town elder with a finger on the pulse of everything that goes on inside the village. So it’s impossible to know who to trust and even more impossible to bestow any benefit of the doubt. They’re the ones quick to dismiss her as an outsider who both doesn’t understand their strength against the elements and is too weak to match that constitution when she dares to act autonomously. They’re the ones skulking in the dark, popping up everywhere she turns. The only danger she actually finds, though, is them. They assume she’ll get lost or that the relative of a bear killed earlier in the year by local butcher Hasan (Erkan Bektas) will attack. Ever since Asli came to town, the residents have warned her about going places alone. What happens as a result, while tragic, is therefore an accident. And for her to panic in response to the unyielding aggressive entitlement and hospitality supplied to her upon arrival. It’s therefore only natural for Asli to be angry when the townsfolk disregard her medical advice while the doctor is stranded in snow a town over. During a post-screening Q&A she said this feeling sparked the process before her thoughts about humanity’s treatment of nature helped her and co-writer Yesim Aslan bolster the suspense for how that fear could be augmented by the overarching philosophy of mankind’s need to bend over backwards to blame someone (or something) else rather than own up to their own responsibility. It’s that sense of always being on alert that drove director Selcen Ergun to make Snow and the Bear. She’s tired of not being respected and having no control. She’s an adult woman who understands all too well the implicit patriarchal demand for compensation that comes with good deeds-that sense of feeling trapped, always owing. It’s because Asli doesn’t want to feel as though she needs protection. The reason she went anyway isn’t about not wanting to cheat the system like her parents think when they blame “stubbornness” as the cause of their fear for her safety due to blizzards and bear attacks. ![]() Her father had strings to pull to get her reassigned. It doesn’t matter that her compulsory assignment as a nurse was to be stationed in a small Turkish village in the middle of nowhere. ![]()
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