I’ve yet to see a duff film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. So I was expecting this to be of a similar high level of accomplishment.
But it didn’t quite all hang together.
There are some lovely moments in it. Like Muzaffer here wandering around with his little nephew searching for a tortoise to play with.
The filming of this tortoise and little boy goes on for 7 minutes. The pace of the film in general is lesuirely-lethargic, somewhat tortoise-slow.
Ceylan got his mother and father to act in the film.
Actually they don’t ‘act’ as such. More like inhabit loosely fictional versions of themselves. The conceit of the film is that Muzaffer (Muzaffer Ozedemir) is directing a film in his home town using real-to-life characters being more or less as, or like, themselves. Interestingly, and ironically, Ceylans mother Fatma is reluctant about being in the film, expressing doubts about her and father Emin’s ability to ‘act’.
He certainly doesn’t need to act that much. Just look and be (himself)
He’s better in the straight to camera static poses. The wrangle he has with the local government pinching his beloved poplar trees is rather unengaging; possibly because his acting can’t quite stretch to engaged emotional expression. Never mind, he’s a lovely old lad. If he were my dad, I’d have wanted to have him in my film too.
It goes without saying that the look of a Ceylan film is going to be pretty lovely.
That’s the assistant director of the films film there pulling up his trousers. What a place to go to the loo in. Sunflowers drenched in pee (don’t think it was poo)
And this is where they’ve filmed, waiting for the breaking of the dawn.
That snapshot (from the film) doesn’t do the scene photogenic justice.
Actually Nuri Bilge Ceylan can do no wrong in my book. I mean, this isn’t a film I could watch with anyone else. They’d be bored by it after about 20 minutes. But I like these long slow languorous scenes that evoke moody melancholy, lingering lovingly over the transience of the natural world.
(I suspect all the birds we’re hearing singing everywhere have been added in to intensify this sense of sensual naturalism)
This film is the second in Ceylan’s autobiographical trilogy, following Kasaba (1997) and preceding (Uzak/Distant (2002).
Muzaffer Ozedemir (with head in hand) and Emin Toprak appear in all 3 films. Emin Toprak as Saffet assists Muzaffer with his half-arsed, cack-handed film.
Saffet begs Muzaffer to take him to Istanbul and help him get a job. Muzaffer trys to dissuade him from making the move and leave his roots, this humble little backwater rural town where he more suitably belongs.
But Saffet does eventually make it to Istanbul. The sad story of his stay with Muzaffer in the big alienating city becomes the third film – Uzak/Distant – in the trilogy.
This middle film is the weaker part of the trilogy. It dawdles along to no great effect. Muzaffer Ozedemirs head in hand lethargy doesn’t exactly encourage sympathetic interest in his film, or empathetic engagement with him as a character. He overdoes the yawning boredom and listless apathy a bit too much. Ceylans parents, although perfectly lovely as themselves, aren’t particularly active or emotively engaging as characters in the film either.
There’s something just a bit too pale and passive about this film. An inertia hangs over it like a soporific sleepy cloud. Of course, I’ll keep it because its Nuri Bilge Ceylan and he’s one of my favourite directors. But I don’t know that I’ll be watching it again in a hurry.
Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey
6.5/10
Windows on the World 