Journal Article

Spatial Thresholds and Existential Dilemmas in New Turkish Cinema: A Reading of Something Useful

Özgür, Özlem, Büyükpala, Mehmet Serdar

2025

Overview

Cinematic spaces are defined by their ability to create new spaces through reorganizing physical environments, a process facilitated by cinema. Directors use unique spaces in their films to convey specific themes and emotions. In Pelin Esmer's İşe Yarar Bir Şey (Something Useful, 2017), the train serves as the setting for the film's initial segment, offering views of external lives from within through the window. This prompts individuals to reflect, question their existence, and experience diverse emotional states. The objective of this study, which examines the 2017 film Something Useful, is to analyze the spaces utilized and the spatial experiences of the protagonists at the threshold by examining them through the lenses of Gaston Bachelard's (1994) concepts of home, Stavros Stavrides's (2010) notion of the threshold, and Michel Foucault's (2008) concept of heterotopia. The train, as an example of heterotopia, facilitates a transition to the protagonists' inner worlds while observing the external world. This space is characterized by a different experience of time, functioning as a transitional space that is both physical and metaphorical. It is marked by threshold elements, such as glass, which delineate and symbolize the space's function as a conduit between inner and outer realms. The house is an uncanny space for existential inquiries and suicide. It is a mix of cosmos and chaos.

• Publisher: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh,University of Pittsburgh
• Subject: Architecture / Audiences / cinematic space / Emotions / Foucault, Michel / heterotopia / home / Language / Motion picture directors & producers / Motion pictures / Narratives / Space / suicide / threshold / Thresholds