I really liked the movie. This is the second movie of a trilogy. The first in the series was "Cenneti Beklerken" and the third one is "Golgeler ve Suretler (Shadows and Faces)". These three movies have very different settings and story lines, but a common theme in all is the issue of morally good vs. bad action. "Is it an individual's moral stance that makes an act good or bad?" " What is the morally good act in a complicated situation?" are the kinds of questions that one asks while watching these movies. Another common element in these three movies is that Dervis Zaim has engaged with one form of Ottoman traditional art in each of them. In the first one, it was miniature. In the third one it's the traditional shadow play (Karagoz and Hacivat), and in this second one, Nokta (Dot), it is the Ottoman art of Calligraphy. Indeed, in "Nokta" (Dot), it is the way Zaim has engaged with the art of Calligraphy that has impressed me most. Reading a little bit about Caligraphy after watching the movie, I have realized how he used it to improve/push the limits of/experiment new forms in cinema. For example, he used Tuz Golu (Salt Lake) like an empty sheet and his camera like a pen and ink, as if he was writing calligraphy. Just like a calligrapher, who'd not lift his hand and his pen until he is finished, Zaim never moved his camera to another setting than Tuz Golu. This exchange between the two art forms (calligraphy and cinema) is impressive. Similarly, the parallels between the dot that was never put in the calligraphy written in the 16th century (the story told in the movie) and the death of Ahmed making him a dot on the lake and a dot that ends his suffering just made the movie a journey to the joys of discovering new details. I feel like one needs to watch it over and over again, each time paying attention to different details hidden in the interaction between the form and the content of the movie.
