You think you know what you’re in for with A Round of Applause, but oh man, you couldn’t be more wrong. This audacious Turkish series doesn’t just bend reality – it shatters it into a kaleidoscope of distorted perceptions and haunting, visceral imagery. Right from the absurdist opening of a couple blithely prepping for a baby they haven’t conceived, you’re hurled into a surreal vortex that’s equal parts fascinating and unsettling.
The rules of logic need not apply as Berkun Oya’s fever dream of a show unfurls. One minute you’re watching an expectant mother meditate, the next her fetus is a burly, chain-smoking man weighing the banality of existence. Sudden tonal shifts disorient you just as you’re finding your footing. Vibrant one moment, devastatingly bleak the next – A Round of Applause is a freakish rollercoaster of conflicting emotions and headscratching WTF moments.
Get ready to be challenged, perplexed, and perhaps a tad uncomfortable. This daring piece of avant-garde lunacy demands you free your mind of all preconceptions. It’s a decisive swing for the fences that will either stupefy you with its inventive brilliance or have you swearing off Turkish psychedelia forever. An unforgettable experience either way.
A Surreal Odyssey Through the Kaleidoscope of Family Life
At the core of A Round of Applause’s deliriously offbeat narrative is the seemingly normal family unit of Zeynep, Mehmet, and their son Metin. But from the moment we meet the perpetually bickering Zeynep and Mehmet excitedly planning for a baby they haven’t actually conceived, it’s clear we’re in for a wild, metaphysical ride.
Once Metin enters the equation as a gruff, nicotine-puffing fetus cynically opining on the futility of life, all bets are off. Reality bends and distorts as Oya’s fever-dream vision morphs fluidly between the mundane and the extraordinary. One moment you’re watching the parents hosting overgrown man-children for a sleepover, the next a thunderstorm prompts Metin’s disembodied voice to lament his impending “burglar’s house” of a troubled home life.
The series’s very structure is an audacious high-wire act, recklessly pinballing between deadpan domestic satire, haunting existential poetry, and phantasmagorical scenes that seem birthed from a lucid dream. Grown men climb up umbilical cords, parents remain eerily calm after losing their newborn, and the world continuously shape-shifts in shocking moments of discombobulating magic realism.
And yet, through the dizzying funhouse kaleidoscope of abstract imagery and brain-twisting metaphors, an emotionally resonant, quintessentially human story about family bonds and the universal struggle to find one’s purpose tenaciously anchors it all. With Metin as our world-weary guide, A Round of Applause is an enthralling odyssey that ricochets from the profoundly philosophical to the raucously absurd – often all in the same deliriously audacious scene.
An Avant-Garde Mastermind’s Daring Vision
If there’s one thing Netflix’s A Round of Applause makes abundantly clear, it’s that creator Berkun Oya is an avant-garde genius operating on a higher creative plane than mere mortals. From the first frame, his boundary-obliterating directorial stamp is unmistakable – an audacious middle finger to formulaic storytelling conventions.
Oya’s scripts are a delirious commingling of mundane slice-of-life and psychotropic magical realism that whiplash between tones and realities like a manic pinball. One second you’re watching a couple host the most annoying dinner party guests imaginable, the next an anthropomorphic fetus is soliloquizing about his former life as a protein inside an orange. It’s unrestrained, uncompromising bonkers brilliance.
The sheer brazenness of Oya’s avant-garde vision is admirable, even when individual stylistic gambits don’t quite land. You can’t accuse the man of playing it safe. His adeptness at slaloming between bone-dry domestic satire and brain-melting abstract surrealism keeps you perpetually off-balance and unsure of what mind-bending thematic zigzag lies ahead.
He’s an aggressively idiosyncratic creator clearly charting his own path, bringing to vivid life oft-explored concepts like family strife, existential dread, and generational ennui in bracingly unique ways that defy conventions. Love it or hate it, A Round of Applause’s ambition is never less than exhilarating as Oya continuously subverts traditional three-act structure for a deliciously unhinged narrative tapestry all his own.
A Cast of Fearless Thespians Bringing the Madness to Life
At the twisted heart of A Round of Applause’s fever dream is the fearless ensemble absolutely committed to selling Berkun Oya’s most unhinged narrative flights of fancy. Anchoring it all are Aslihan Gürbüz and Fatih Artman as the soon-to-be-frazzled parents Zeynep and Mehmet. These two vets possess the rare ability to pivot between deadpan naturalism and unrestrained gonzo lunacy on a dime without breaking stride.
One moment they’re the embodiment of upper-middle-class ennui, rolling their eyes at obnoxious dinner guests. The next, they’re fielding existential soliloquies from their chain-smoking fetal son like it’s just another day at the office. Gürbüz and Artman wield their preternatural aplomb like a superpower, grounding A Round of Applause’s wildest excesses in a relatable human core.
But the true showstopper is Cihat Suvarioglu as Metin, the deeply troubled son whose arc spans from cynical, nicotine-puffing fetus to angsty teen poet to shaggy, bearded man-child DJ still desperately seeking purpose. Suvarioglu is utterly transfixing as the tormented linchpin of Oya’s proudly idiosyncratic vision. His raw commitment to his character’s feverish mania and tortured existential crisis adds profundo emotional heft to even the most laughter-inducing absurdities.
Bolstered by skilled support from the ensemble’s comedic talents and requisite straight-men, A Round of Applause’s cast forms a seamless troupe of reality-warping conjurers. With alchemical skill, they blend wry domestic satire, haunting pathos, and mind-melting WTF-ery into an utterly singular small-screen dissociative experience.
Phantasmagorical Psychedelic Wonderland for the Senses
If A Round of Applause’s audacious, soul-stirring narrative wasn’t enough of a mind-melter, just wait until you drink in the series’ downright phantasmagorical visuals. From the surreal opening frames of a pregnant Zeynep wandering through a disheveled, rain-soaked apartment, it’s clear your retinas are in for a kaleidoscopic assault of symbolism and striking imagery.
Oya wields his camera like a brush, conjuring sumptuously unsettling tableaus and arresting visuals that amplify his narrative’s discordant emotional tenor. The drab grays and muted tones of domestic ennui bleed into eye-searing splashes of vivid color and extravagant production design flourishes that appear beamed in from a feverish dream.
One standout sequence finds Metin’s chain-smoking fetal avatar brooding in a cluttered, murky space of muted earth tones and creeping shadows, its seedy ambiance coalescing into a visceral embodiment of the angst and claustrophobia of existential dread. In stark juxtaposition, Zeynep’s womb is visualized as a surreal waterlogged world of dancing pastels and coruscating lighting cues, an ethereal realm that’s at once wondrous and nightmarish.
Across every hallucinatory vignette, A Round of Applause’s indulgent visual maximalism works in spellbinding sync with its lo-fi, deadpan domestic realism to create a gonzo sense of all-encompassing unreality and perpetual disorientation. By fearlessly foregrounding both the acutely mundane and the unapologetically bizarre through Oya’s kaleidoscopic lens, the series emerges as a boldly imaginative melding of the ordinary and extraordinary that scorches itself into your cerebral cortex.
Profound Philosophizing Wrapped in an Absurdist Madcap Romp
Beneath its deliriously absurd veneer of imaginative gags and brain-twisting visuals, A Round of Applause has loftier ambitions than mere escapist surrealism. Over its feverish six-episode descent into metaphysical madness, creator Berkun Oya probes profound philosophical questions surrounding parenthood, existential despair, and humanity’s ceaseless quest for purpose and meaning.
On its surface, the series frames these inquiries through the dysfunctional lens of Zeynep and Mehmet’s disintegrating marriage as the well-meaning but increasingly disaffected parents grapple with their eccentric son Metin’s crippling ennui. But Oya expands his thematic scope far beyond domestic satire into cosmic meditations on the grand universal struggles binding all sentient life.
As we skip through time, Metin’s journey morphs from a bleakly comic coming-of-age into an emotionally searing existential gauntlet strewn with poetic musings on mankind’s insignificance and the cold indifference of the universe. One moment he’s a world-weary fetus decrying the meaninglessness awaiting him, the next a nihilistic rapper despairing at life’s futility.
It’s heady, profound stuff fueled by an undercurrent of creeping melancholy and despair. Yet Oya’s cavalier marriage of whimsy and profundity mostly strikes an intoxicating balance of illuminating humanity’s deepest insecurities while injecting levity with surreal comedic touches. And when the director’s zealous reach does occasionally exceed his narrative’s grasp, resulting in metaphors and motifs that feel gratuitously dense or indulgent, the sheer creative verve remains admirable.
At its cerebral core, A Round of Applause emerges as a bracing dose of absurdist humanism – a madcap exploration of perspectives that mines universally relatable anxieties through the funhouse lens of delightfully idiosyncratic fantasy.
A Deliriously Daring TV Freak-Out
A Round of Applause is the type of avant-garde mind-melter that will either enrapture you with its surreal visuals and bold philosophizing or inspire a full-on existential crisis as you question that gaping void in your soul. There’s no halfway with Berkun Oya’s phantasmagorical vision – it’s a boundary-obliterating descent into absurdist madness and poetic melancholia that demands you free your consciousness to take the plunge.
For the adventurous viewer craving an idiosyncratic dissociative experience that scorches itself into your cerebral cortex, A Round of Applause delivers an utterly singular dark comedy rhapsody of profound ideas wrapped in deliriously gonzo packaging. It’s a feverish eruption of creative verve overflowing with both ingenious moments of brilliance and flashes of gratuitous indulgence. An exhilarating and exhausting emotional paradox that lingers long after its haunting finale.
Buckle up and brace yourselves for Turkish psychedelia’s defiantly avant-garde answer to The Sopranos – a startlingly original work of uncompromising artistry that will burrow into your subconscious whether you adore or abhor its kaleidoscopic mania. An unforgettable freak-out either way.
The Review
A Round of Applause
A Round of Applause is an audacious, mind-bending work of avant-garde genius. Berkun Oya's daring vision seamlessly melds the profoundly philosophical with the deliriously absurd, resulting in a singularly surreal existential romp that burrows into your psyche. While its metaphysical musings and indulgent visuals may prove too gratuitously dense for some, the series' fearless creativity and gonzo verve make it a must-see for adventurous viewers craving an idiosyncratic emotional paradox that lingers long after its haunting finale. An exhilarating maelstrom of uncompromising artistry.
PROS
- Audacious, boundary-pushing avant-garde vision
- Visually stunning with surreal, phantasmagorical imagery
- Tackles profound philosophical themes in a creative way
- Excellent performances that embody the absurd tone
- Startlingly original and defies conventions
- Emotionally resonant story about family amid the surrealism
CONS
- Absurdist style may alienate mainstream audiences
- Some metaphors/symbolism feel gratuitously dense
- Tonal whiplash between comedy and melancholy
- Pacing issues with some storylines dragging
- Not every creative risk pays off successfully
