A Poison Tree: Khatami Deconstructs the Psychoses of Patriarchy

For his third feature, Iranian American director Alireza Khatami formulates a powerful psychodrama unspooling through the microcosm of normalized patriarchal dysfunction in Turkey with The Things You Kill. Employing a surreal Lynchian visual flourish to examine the potent psychological trauma of a protagonist whose breaking point from a disastrous reality is literally and figuratively comprised through the metaphor of a sterile garden, it’s also an elusive Biblical allusion to the allegory of Isaac and Abraham, where patricide catalyzes a psychotic fracture. Dedicating the film to his sisters, Khatami dives into the toxic attachment styles fostered and reinforced through repressive gender roles in a traditionally heteropatriarchal culture, where the absorption of oppression cements endless intergenerational trauma.…...