Durul and Yağmur Taylan’s The Little Apocalypse (2006)
By Fazila Derya Agis, Ph.D.
Natural disasters can hinder the future plans of humans and transform their lives into nightmares. Accordingly, repeated earthquakes lead to psychological traumas that mar the daily lives of their witnesses. However, one must keep in mind that some human beings can cause such deep physical trauma to the structure of the earth that those physical devastations deep in the soil can change the lives of these human beings and their loved ones into real ecological horrors, involving material and spiritual losses and leading to excessive psychological traumas.
Recent earthquake disaster films such as The Quake (2018), sequel to The Wave (2015), still posit nature’s violence as separate from human actions; this seems plausible given the (apparent) vastness and untouchability of the planet’s tectonic plates. But the human capacity for destruction reaches far below the surface of the planet, and the film The Little Apocalypse (2006) investigates how human activity can contribute to earthquakes. This attention to anthropogenic effects thus offers a critical alternative to the mainstream earthquake disaster film. The Turkish movie titled The Little Apocalypse/Doomsday (“Küçük Kıyamet” originally in Turkish) — written by Doğu Yücel and directed by Durul and Yağmur Taylan (the Taylan Brothers) — shows that human beings’ carelessness in the construction industry may lead to disaster during a strong earthquake.
In reality, earthquakes occur for five anthropogenic reasons: 1) if one builds a dam, the water’s force may cause changes in the soil on which it was built; for instance, various earthquakes occurred in the Hoover Dam area since Lake Mead’s water level increased; 2) if one injects liquid into the soil, an earthquake may occur, as in the case of the U.S. Army that injected ‘165 million gallons of toxic waste’ in the Rocky Mountains via a well from 1962 to 1966 but stopped this operation most probably due to earthquakes; 3) mining operations lead to earthquakes; 4) drilling can have severe effects, as in the case of ‘a natural-gas field in Uzbekistan, the Gazli’ that caused changes in the tectonic activity in the region; and 5) tall buildings harm the earth’s surface; for instance, the Taipei 101, proposed to be the largest building on the globe in 2005, ‘weighs in at more than 700,000 metric tons’ (Madrigal, 2008). Additionally, forest fires destroy trees, leading terrestrial movements.
The Little Apocalypse allegorises the psychological and environmental trauma of the 1999 Istanbul earthquake, which devastated over a hundred thousand buildings, killed tens of thousands of people, and significantly altered the environment. The film centres on the fictional Bektan family — specifically Bilge (the mother, who lost her own mother in the Istanbul earthquake), Zeki (the father, who works as civil engineer), Eda (the little daughter), and Alp (the new-born baby son), as well as their nephews, Didem, Batu and Filiz – as they take a summer vacation to Fethiye, a province of the city of Muğla in the Aegean region of Turkey. Several threatening ecological events notably occur here, which serve as a reflection of the environmental destruction caused by the building of apartment complexes, villas, and hotels in the Aegean region of Turkey.
Bilge is immediately attracted to the luxurious Fethiye villa after having seen its photo, stating ‘It is strange that we hire a house after having seen its photo’ (Taylan, 2006). When they arrive at the house, however, they notice that it is next to a cemetery, and there are no trees around the house. Consequently, Zeki asks, ‘Why is this quarter so empty?’ And the real estate agent (who is interestingly also the cemetery guard) replies, ‘the season starts late here’ (Taylan, 2006). The film is alluding here to the role the construction industry plays in causing earthquakes. This isolated quarter serves as a specific metaphor for the irreparable ecological damage the industry causes to the surface of the earth, by destroying forests and arable fields to build houses that may lead to devastating earthquakes. Indeed, while people dig the earth to excavate mines or build buildings, the cemetery reminds us of the fact that everybody will be buried in the soil after their death and that excessive wealth — as well as the construction and mining businesses that thrive on the avidity of the human beings for possessing more than they need — are all ultimately useless.
These key ecological concerns are nowhere more apparent than at the end of the film, when an earthquake takes hold at night. Zeki tries to save his family, but, as a civil engineer involved in the construction of enormous buildings, dams, and water channels, he is paradoxically positioned as one of the avid devastators of nature. Within the film’s logic, human beings are conceptualised as the direct cause of earthquakes, passing their holidays in luxury villas instead of enjoying nature’s products by farming, raising crops, or growing and watering flowers, visiting forests without destroying them, and by damaging the surface of the earth via civil engineering. There is some hope to be found amongst the ruin, however, which is evidenced in the character of Eda. While at the beach, she states: ‘I am relaunching the exhibition of the sandcastles I have built’ (Taylan, 2006). The image of a ‘castle by the sea’ that will soon be swallowed up by waves functions as an apt metaphor for the need for environmental education, to save future generations from extinction.
The ecological moral teachings of this movie are painfully poignant today, reminding people of the causes of earthquakes based on nature destruction, and the need for definitive change.
Works Cited
Küçük Kıyamet [The Little Apocalypse/Doomsday]. (2006) [Film]. Taylan, Y. and Taylan, D. dirs. Istanbul, Turkey: Limon.
Madrigal, A. (2008) Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake. Wired. Available from https://www.wired.com/2008/06/top-5-ways-that/ [Accessed 3 April 2020].
The Quake. (2018) [Film]. Andersen, J. A. dir. Norway: Film Väst.
The Wave. (2015) [Film]. Uthaug, R. dir. Norway: Film Väst.
For pictures on this movie, please, visit the movie’s IMDB site for copyright reasons: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845474/
Author Biography
Fazila Derya Agis has a Ph.D. in Italian Language and Literature from Ankara University. She has an M.S. in Social Anthropology from the Middle East Technical University, an M.A. in English Linguistics from Hacettepe University, and a B.A. in Italian Language and Literature from Ankara University. She attended a post-graduate course on literary translation at the University of Bari. She conducts research on human-animal relations and eco-medical humanities.