“Shall we jump, Ismail?”
“It probably won’t work from this height.”
On a roof, 25-year-old Hakan jokes with his 18-year-old colleague Ismail about the hopelessness of their work. A few months earlier, both boys traveled from their native villages to an all-inclusive resort on the Turkish Riviera to work there. They are introverted guys with ambitions. We especially come to know Hakan as an inward-looking thinker, a fanatic reader who is addicted to the work of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. But in his work as a lifeguard these philosophers are of little use to him. His main task is to push impatient tourists into a pool on the slide. Once Hakan tries some intellectual small talk when he asks a Russian tourist if he is familiar with Dostoevsky’s work. The tourist has no idea, he just wants to slide.
It is a very striking clash of life goals, in the beautiful documentary all inclusive by the Belgian director Volkan Üce. He found in Hakan and Ismail two great main characters, who perfectly embody both sides of the work in the hotel business. Hakan only works there to earn a better life. His thankless job should help him earn enough money to make the crossing to the US, where he wants to study and eventually direct films. Ismail worked as a hairdresser in his native village, but saw his job opportunities evaporate due to the influx of Syrian refugees. With his job in the hotel kitchen he wants to earn money for his family that has been left behind.
In all this, the tourists remain mainly extras, who only appear when they are hungry, injured or needy. But the same tourists are also in charge and have to be treated like princes and princesses by the staff every second of the day. The division of roles is clear: the guest takes, the hotel employee gives.
Hakan has looked at that division of roles after one season and has lost all zest for life. Staying is not an option for him. He sees himself as a ‘slave of the system’, a system in which no one values each other and everyone is self-centered. The HR manager reacts rather laconic: ‘Welcome to the 21st century.’
You can all inclusive thus regard it as a portrait of someone who withdraws from the hopeless perspective of countless fellow sufferers, who would never get the chance to be pushed into a swimming pool themselves. But in the new tourist season, Hakan is again at the top of the slide. After all, he has to earn money somewhere for that next step. Only when he is at university can he become ‘a pure person’ again.
Fortunately, the ambition was still there, but his return also made the resort resemble Hotel California: entering is damn easy, but escaping seems like a utopia. Welcome to the 21st century.