Devotion

Director: Cynthia Madansky
Cinematographer: Carolyn Macartney
Editor: Jane Abramowitz
Music: Zeena Parkins
16 mm ◊ 34 min.

“I love a city that greets you with flowers.” So opens Devotion, in an appropriately beautiful overture to the first of what would become many projects undertaken by Cynthia Madansky in Turkey and its grand, palimpsestic Istanbul. It’s also a bittersweet paean, given the film’s themes of romantic rupture and isolation. At once a breakup film, an experiment with narrative, and a reflection on a nation in transition, the film is structured as a drift through the city by way of nights passed in various hotel rooms. In Madansky’s hands these transitory non-places become a means to reflect on shifting states of selfhood, of coupledom, of statehood.

Throughout one can locate shades of Chris Marker’s curious eye, of Marguerite Duras’ interplay between image and text, and of Chantal Akerman’s own desolate, evocative hotel rooms, the film is nevertheless distinctly Madansky’s, reflecting the artist’s ongoing interrogation of belonging.

Following Treyf (1998) and Past Perfect (2002), two films whose subject matter and personal connection necessitated a degree of responsibility and precision, Devotion feels refreshingly open. A weight of representation of course remains, but is here shifted to that of the outside observer. Freed from certain fixed perimeters and codes, the filmmaker is instead able to embrace the perspective of an observer open to unexpected connections. These readings reflect both outward and inward, hinging on the polysemous “devotion” of the title. As the romantic connection at the film’s core that continues to fray, Madansky incorporates and sets it against the practice of religious devoutness on an individual and social scale, in a moment in which the nation was negotiating such questions. “Istanbul, a secular city challenged by Islam,” the voiceover muses. “Istanbul, a Muslim city challenged by secularism.”

Though relatively minimal in formal terms—with a toned and measured aesthetic sensibility, effortlessly capturing and assembling minor but profound details—the film further builds out worlds and narrative through the deceptively rich use of sound and voice. The result is a portrait of a place that employs both the speculative and spectral to feel both ambulatory and grounded.