“The Museum of Innocence” is a nostalgic and unnerving adaptation of Orhan Pamuk’s work.
Foreign Policy
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“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it,” begins Orhan Pamuk’s 2008 novel, The Museum of Innocence. That melancholy line hangs over the glossy and moving—if occasionally tone-deaf—Netflix series of the same name.
The series, which topped Turkey’s streaming charts, marks the first major adaptation of Pamuk’s work, surprising for one of the country’s only Nobel laureates and its most famous author. Set in Turkey during the turbulent 1970s and early 1980s, the rollicking tale follows a wealthy man who becomes obsessed with a poor shopgirl and follows her over the years. The series is quite nostalgic, both in its Layla and Majnun-style longing and in its protagonist’s own strain of imperial nostalgia. Not unlike Turkey’s neo-Ottomanists, he cannot let go of the woman who symbolizes so much of the country’s past.
“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it,” begins Orhan Pamuk’s 2008 novel, The Museum of Innocence. That melancholy line hangs over the glossy and moving—if occasionally tone-deaf—Netflix series of the same name.
The series, which topped Turkey’s streaming charts, marks the first major adaptation of Pamuk’s work, surprising for one of the country’s only Nobel laureates and its most famous author. Set in Turkey during the turbulent 1970s and early 1980s, the rollicking tale follows a wealthy man who becomes obsessed with a poor shopgirl and follows her over the years. The series is quite nostalgic, both in its Layla and Majnun-style longing and in its protagonist’s own strain of imperial nostalgia. Not unlike Turkey’s neo-Ottomanists, he cannot let go of the woman who symbolizes so much of the country’s past.
The Museum of Innocence is at its best in its portrayal of the 1970s for a particular slice of Istanbul’s upper class: Men and women embrace free-flowing hairstyles, large earrings, and oversized sunglasses. House parties continue through the night, and young people dance, make out, get high, and drink until they can’t anymore. The decade marked a departure from the tired dichotomy between Westernizing republicans and entrepreneurial conservatives that dominated the first half-century of the Turkish Republic. In the 1970s, Turkey’s political lexicon expanded as citizens devoted their lives to new political projects, such as feminism, socialism, and anti-colonialism.
This atmosphere of cultural experimentation was made possible by the rise of progressive politics. When the series opens in 1975, excitement about the program of industry nationalization and land redistribution is near its height. Around the same time, segments of the Turkish bourgeoisie—mostly students, intellectuals, and young professionals—were radicalized, some even taking up arms to join revolutionary movements.
The Museum of Innocence largely sidelines this political ferment, though graffiti shouting “Down With Imperialism” or “Fully Independent Turkey!” flickers in the background, evoking the era’s growing anti-U.S. sentiment. Political violence was endemic, yet the period’s open, uncensored confrontation between various ideological forces also brought clarity about Turkey’s economic and social foundations, something that no longer exists today. Over the course of the nine-part series, I wondered whether those years—between the dizzying freedom of the 1970s and the politically repressive decade that followed the 1980 coup—were the happiest moment of Turkey’s life, too, though we Turks didn’t know it.
A man wearing formal clothes and a woman in a yellow dress stand facing each other in a room
Pasali and Eylul Lize Kandemir as Fusun in TheMuseum of Innocence. Netflix
The show’s protagonist, Kemal, is quintessentially bourgeois: the well-mannered, cunning son of a textile magnate. He is engaged to a blond, Sorbonne-educated woman named Sibel who embodies the Westernizing aspirations of his class. One day, as Kemal shops for an expensive handbag for Sibel, he meets Fusun, a young, distant relative who works in the store. A dark-haired former beauty pageant contestant, she represents an intoxicating freedom from convention and the responsibilities of a genteel life. Kemal is enthralled with Fusun and the two quickly enter into a torrid affair.
Kemal fantasizes about marrying Sibel and living with Fusun, as though bourgeois society might politely ignore his double life, while Fusun—who is granted a point of view in the series, unlike in the novel—hopes Kemal will break off his engagement and choose her instead. Inevitably this brings to mind Turkey’s own torn feelings between its Westernizing aspirations and traditional identity over the past two centuries. By giving Fusun a perspective, the series changes the balance of Pamuk’s story and injects a much welcome feminist layer into it, but it generally sticks to the class-crossed lovers trope without using it to say something interesting or specific about Turkey’s social tensions.
The early episodes unfold in Nisantasi, the chic, upscale neighborhood where I spent the first 15 years of my life. The series nicely recreates life at the intersection of Tesvikiye, Rumeli, and Vali Konagi Avenues—its boutiques and charcuteries, shiny black-and-red Chevrolets—though it sometimes feels like a generic European city.
When Fusun eventually flees from Kemal’s life, he plunges into a depression and begins a yearslong search to find her. It is in this search that the series pivots from Nisantasi to the poorer, more interesting parts of the city filled with the ruinous beauty of civilizations past. Here the series’ tone and style changes, too. Through hand-held cameras, we see Kemal tracing the city’s cobblestoned streets in grainy sequences—through movie theaters and side streets, through the hustle and bustle of the city’s picturesque neighborhoods, through a rundown hotel in Istanbul’s conservative Old City.
Years later, after Kemal finds Fusun, the series opens a window onto Yesilcam, Istanbul’s once-thriving film district, where directors and screenwriters congregated at smoky pubs. The 1970s were a golden age for Turkish cinema, marked by the rise of iconic actors and influential production companies churning out hundreds of films each year. In one particularly affecting scene, hundreds gather in an open-air theater to watch a film starring Orhan Gencebay, whose religious motifs and class lament spoke directly to the country’s poor. His ascent reflects a broader cultural shift: As socialist ideals faltered, religious sentiment offered an escape for the downtrodden—an undercurrent that would later shape the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist movement.
Kemal, however, remains curiously untouched by the country’s upheavals. If he is a metaphor for a certain Turkish elite, his political indifference is telling. His apathy and cynicism mirror the disposition the state has often preferred in its affluent classes when repression is on the rise. Instead of caring about Turkey’s social injustices and the fate of its underclass, he resigns himself to an endless journey of skirt-chasing instead.
A man wearing a light blue suit stands in front of a storefront with hats and textiles hanging in the window.
Pasali in TheMuseum of Innocence. Netflix
Over the course of the series, we see the liberatory politics of Turkey in the 1970s give way to self-serving capitalism. We witness the 1979 explosion of a Romanian crude oil tanker on the Bosphorus and the 1980 coup, when soldiers storm Istanbul’s streets and grind life in the city to a halt. We see martial law end and administrations change. Yet these seismic events barely disturb Kemal’s inner world. If anything, military rule simplifies his life, removing the inconvenience of street unrest and allowing him to focus entirely on his obsession. As generals reshape the nation, Kemal remains unchanged—a harbinger of the era of individualism that is to come.
Unlike the book, which offers a more distant and layered treatment of Kemal’s obsessions, the series is largely sympathetic to Kemal, with its saccharine depiction of his romantic desires. Selahattin Pasali, who plays Kemal, displays the ugly, domineering toxicity behind the romantic mask well, and Eylul Kandemir’s performance as Fusun adds a welcome perspective, showing her character’s awareness of the power imbalance between the two. With a better script and cinematography, they could have shined.
Series director Zeynep Gunay Tan, previously known for the Netflix series The Club, dutifully reconstructs each set piece in Pamuk’s novel, but the effect is both theatrical and lifeless, each gesture too carefully staged. She indulges in some meta turns but overall seems less interested in creating a pace and aesthetics of her own than in covering the intricate plot of the novel. In nine episodes, we jump from one complex scene to another in a manner that is often satisfactory but rarely original or stimulating.
During the endless cycle of dinner and party scenes, I found myself thinking of Turkish auteur Omer Kavur’s 1991 film, The Secret Face, adapted from a section of Pamuk’s Black Book. A masterpiece of Turkish cinema, with a script written by Pamuk, it features long, Antonioni-esque meandering through Istanbul, silently inviting viewers to ponder the mysteries of Turkish life with the protagonist. But Tan rarely allows Kemal to linger in such silence. His wheezy voiceover labors to carry the plot, its heavy sighs eventually overtaking this unreliable narrator’s confession. I wished we could watch Kemal’s misery silently, in the auteur tradition, instead of this unintentionally comic photo-roman treatment.
Still, Tan should be congratulated for her refusal to self-censor—seen in her frank and constant depiction of drinking, smoking, and sexuality—which feels almost rebellious in today’s Turkey. Under Erdogan, broadcast regulators have penalized other series for depicting alcohol, sexual encounters, and even smoking, casting such depictions as obscene or violations of public morality. Netflix has not yet received pushback for The Museum of Innocence, but that could easily change overnight, particularly if the cast speaks out for progressive causes.
Watching Turkey change across the series—from the unruly freedom of the 1970s to Erdogan’s increasingly repressive “New Turkey” of the 2000s—was an unnerving experience. In a sense, Turkey today is a country of Kemals: obsessive individualists easily diverted from collective action by their private fixations. And yet the sexually liberated, politically daring 1970s endure as a reminder that other, collectivist ways of living together once seemed possible—and might be again.
