SPOILER ALERT
I had predicted in episode 1 that Deha will become a cat and mouse game between the Devil and the Devil’s son as the two fight for intellectual supremacy. The line that separates them is ideology. Whereas Devran is driven by justice for his brother’s death (and ultimately justice for his family), Iskender is driven by the smell of the hunt.
Iskender is apathetic about who is on the other side. He is the presumptive king of this game and he will make sure everyone knows their place, be it his child or his parent. He even left his mother to his ex-wife and exploits her love for him. Cavidan remains indulgent of her only son but her vacuous approach to him is a hint of how he became such an uncontrolled egomaniac. He has no sense of boundaries.
In this episode, Iskender’s orchestrated response to Devran’s exposure of the forced imprisonment of the drug addict accused of Boran’s death, is nothing short of devastating.
Money or Ego?
Iskender makes an elaborate plan to show Devran his ‘place’ and bring him to his knees. He wants to leave Devran without any money (which equals to no power) and have Devran remain beholden to him. To achieve this, he exploits Devran’s weakness for knowing the truth behind Boran’s death and robs him of the million dollars he had earned from his mathematical proof. Further, he ‘steals’ the million dollars Devran was supposed to launder for Karga, and most likely uses the same funds to buy Gülce’s inheritance from her father – the family’s only homestead.
Gülce sells the home to save Devran from Karga’s wrath but Iskender uses the opportunity to win back Aysel and lets her gloat over Gülce as Aysel shoves the deed of Gülce's parental home in her face at the end. This man has no scruples and doesn’t think at all about the woman who gave birth to him or the woman who gave birth to five of his children. He thrives on the toxicity of his relationship with Aysel and has Imre convinced that this is ‘love’.
As he reveals more of his callousness and self-serving attitude, it becomes obvious that the only thing that drives him is his ego. He ‘let’ Devran win a few rounds because he had a twisted sense of pride in Devran being his son but he makes sure that Devran learns it was all a controlled win. Iskender never really lost. Devran will now learn that money is not Iskender’s weakness; it’s his ego.
What is Love?
Iskender and Aysel’s co-dependent and noxious relationship feeds both their egos. They thrive on goading each other to the edge and seeing what lengths the other will go to for redemption. Iskender abandoned meaningful relationships with a wife and a mother to chase this monstrous excuse of a woman. As such, neither knows what love or parenthood really is.
They raised another femme fatale in the form of Imre and an excuse of a human being in Cesur. This rag tag family of four understands human flaws, and knows how to exploit them, but all of them are incapable of building a real relationship with anyone.
We see Gülce stand upright against Aysel regardless of any humiliation because her heart is full of love for her children. She takes pride in her identity as a mother. Her devotion to them and their devotion to her is unquestioned. It is her ability to love that keeps Cavidan devoted to her and view her as her only daughter-in-law. Neither women are fooled by Medusa Aysel, like Iskender is. Their mother’s heart only knows to love and protect even when their children make mistakes whereas Aysel knowingly exposes her children to the life of crime Iskender lures her with.
And thus, we see the contrast of the two households where one revolves around hearts full of love and the other that revolves around egos full of lust. When the two go to war, even if some battles are lost, there can only be one that ultimately wins. Love always wins.
Father & Sons
We learn that Iskender is partial to his only non-biological child, Imre. She is the apple of his eye whereas his morals for his own children are negotiable. Imre is Aysel’s daughter from another man while Cesur is Iskender’s biological son from Aysel. We get a hint that Iskender also left Cesur to the wolves in a past event and now belittles his trauma.
This provides insight into Cesur’s psychology. His apathy towards Iskender is worse than Devran’s disrespect towards his father and they are fundamentally different in their approach. Cesur will bring Iskender to the edge of a cliff and throw him off without any regret while Devran will paint Iskender into a corner so that he chooses to jump off the cliff himself. Neither can help having pieces of Iskender course through their veins, but Devran wants to resist the blackness while Cesur has embraced it.
Through his conversations with Sofi, as Devran explores this symbiotic connection he has with Iskender, we understand that a father and son bond is beyond a blood connection. To Devran, Sofi has been more of a father than Iskender ever was. He is the paragon of truth that Devran can rely on and can turn to. And Sofi, in his turn, is willing to let go of his principles to save his beloved adopted son, a young man who is a parallel to his own young self. A lonely boy who wants to step out of the shadows of his father’s darkness and shine bright with the light from within.
In the most pivotal and soulful scene in the episode, Devran tells Sofi about the legend of Kayra-Han and his anti-thesis Erlik. Pulling from Turkic mythology, Kayra-Han is the God of creation and he also created Erlik. Erlik admired his father but was also envious of his power and wanted to defeat him. He believed in his own strength and wanted to dethrone his father.
When Kayra-Han gives him the chance, he wants to prove his own strength and bring Kayra-Han his desired piece of land. In so doing, Erlik also saves a similar piece of land in his own mouth, hoping to have the land to grow his own mountains and kingdom. He believes he is as strong as his father. With Kayra-Han’s machinations, the earth in Erlik’s mouth keeps growing until it begins to choke him. And Erlik is reminded of Kayra-Han’s power and is brought to his knees.
Devran recites this story as a parallel to his narrative with Iskender and admits to Sofi that he has been defeated. Sofi reminds him that this is a long war and gives him a piece of evidence that will help Devran stand up on his feet again.
This is fatherhood. Whereas, Iskender will hit Devran again and again so he stays on his knees, never to forget who the real king is, Sofi will go to all lengths to help his son get up on his feet so he can fight his next battle even if it means Sofi has to sell his soul. Fathers and sons of legends have parallels in the mortal world and to see them unfold so artistically in Deha is an intellectual treat.
If you appreciate good cinema – the ones that invite you to think deeper than the common tropes of family drama – Deha is an insightful show. The way it blends in mythology and ancient legends to how the characters play against each other, it invites one to think about the art of war and human evolution. There is creative dramatization of the various roles. While we get grounded by the real emotions displayed by Devran, his mother and his siblings, Cavidan, Iskender, Aysel, Imre, Cesur are all playing over dramatized versions of a human equivalent. They are intentionally caricatures of people who are somewhat removed from the reality of life.
The aperture through which we view the characters changes when we are watching Devran’s world versus the rest. Sometimes the skits seem more like live theater; disconnected on the surface but unified in the broader narrative. I am immensely enjoying the word play and unexpected scenarios. It is not a trite, feel good hero’s journey. It is the journey of a fallible hero with the purest intentions, which can still get blackened by his inner demons. For a deep character and cinematic study, Deha is excellent. Even if it flags in the popular ratings, it will surely have a cult following for the iconic characters it is bringing to life.
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