Wild Pear Trees, Patrimonial Legacies: Father-Son Relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's The Wild Pear Tree

This article analyzes the father-son relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film The Wild Pear Tree (2018), which tells the story of a son who desires a life as unlike his father’s narrow, provincial life as possible, only to find himself following in his father’s footsteps almost against his will. Drawing upon Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this article examines the film as an oedipal drama that portrays the predicament of a son who grapples with an ineffectual, humiliated father that fails to embody the paternal function. It undertakes to show how the father-son conflict eventually culminates in the father’s transformation from an object of contempt into an identificatory ideal for his son, who becomes heir to a legacy of disillusionment and thwarted hopes.