From Image to Ideal Form: Platonic Love and the Desire for Transcendence in Metin Erksan’s Sevmek ZamanıTime to Love (1965)— A Philosophical Analysis Beyond Reductionist Readings

Abstract

Metin Erksan’s 1965 film Sevmek Zamanı (Time to Love) has long been (mis)read through reductive sociological or mystical lenses. This article proposes to read the film as a cinematic enactment of Platonic metaphysics. Through close analysis of key motifs (the photograph as eikón, the mannequin as degraded phantasma, the lake as Acherusian purification), the article demonstrates how protagonist Halil’s obsession with an image over the living Meral reenacts Plato’s ascent from the appearances to the realm of Forms. The film’s climax, where material representations dissolve into water, becomes a visual corollary to the purification of the soul. Crucially, the article contests prevailing Marxist and Sufi interpretations, and argues that Erksan’s treatment of class markers and religious signifiers in the film functions to displace sociological and devotional readings, thereby opening space for a Platonic articulation of the film’s epistemic concerns. By situating Time to Love alongside modernist works by Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky—rather than limiting it within Anatolian mysticism—this reading reclaims the film as a transnational meditation on cinema’s unique capacity to render philosophical transcendence visible. The article thus contributes to broader debates about “philosophising cinema,” where film does not merely adapt ideas but performs them through its material and temporal form.