Dir.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006, Turkey, 101 mins
Cast: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Nazan Kesal
Review by Mike Bartlett
Fans of Ceylan's last
film, Uzak (2002), will remember its cold, distant protagonist – a
successful photographer enduring a creative block who finds
it impossible to extend any warmth to his visiting cousin.
So they might be forgiven for thinking they're looking
into a mirror image with his latest work. Once again, the
story centres around a gifted intellectual struggling to
complete a photographic project who feels his relationship
is falling apart. Only, this time, the character is played
by the director himself and the object of his desire/frustration
is played by his own offscreen wife, Ebru Ceylan. So an
uncomfortable aura of autobiographical introspection settles
over the narrative.
The opening scenes, set during a working
summer holiday in the resort of Kas, brilliantly outline
the couple's breakdown in only a few shots and dialogue
exchanges. The beauty of an ancient temple is broken by
a sustained yawn, meaningful looks are exchanged over distances,
a petulant row breaks out in front of close friends. Moments
of intimacy or rapprochement are snatched away from the
audience or revealed as a sham. Ceylan's use of editing
is ingenious here – at one
point, a monologue is revealed to be a conversation when
the wife suddenly comes into view, and an intimate kiss is
cruelly exposed as a fantasy when the dreamer wakes blinking
in the sunlight.
This sequence sets the tone for the
whole film, as it follows the man, Isa, around Istanbul
and eventually out to wintry Eastern Turkey where he discovers
his wife is now working. Words are dropped into conversations
that only reveal their true significance later on; “Serap” is mentioned,
but we have to wait 'till a chance meeting in a book shop
to realise that she is a possible lover. When Isa eventually
courts her, their tepid conversation erupts into a violent,
and hilariously over-the-top, sex scene, which at first sight
appears to be a rape, and then through a cut is registered
as the start of a fling. The fetish object in said scene
is a peanut – undermining any notion that arthouse
films are pompous and sombre in one fell swoop, the push-me-pull-you
way Ceylan plays with our perspective being a perfect metaphor
for the protagonist's own sense of confusion and misdirection.
And throughout, Ceylan never softens
Isa's emotional coldness, neither as a director or as an
actor. He is becoming one of modern cinema's finest explorers
of male intransigence – watching
how, through work, class and social status, men close in
on themselves, becoming selfish, unable to connect, unable
to reach out, unable to understand why they might be the
subject of laughter. Ceylan has often been compared to Abbas
Kiarostami – perhaps because of geographical and cultural
proximity as much as their use of long takes and amateur
actors – but it's true that they frequently concentrate
their films on gloomy introverts, Climates most closely resembling
Kiarostami's “Artist in crisis” trilogy – Close-Up,
A Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us. (Is there a case
for saying these two directors appeal to the West more than
their compatriots because of their interest in the very Western
ideas of ennui and individual disaffection?) But a more apt
comparison would be with Michelangelo Antonioni, whose corpus
of work represents a veritable encyclopaedia on modern alienation,
and whose compositional use of architecture, both modern
and ancient, closely resembles that found in Ceylan's film.
Furthermore, the lick-the-screen gorgeous cinematography
and attention to sound detail recall the perfectionism of
that other European giant, Andrei Tarkovsky. Except that
Ceylan's visuals are more keyed to the sensual rather than
the spiritual – the viewer able to see, taste, smell,
every bead of sweat on Ebru Ceylan's skin (one of the most
erotic shots in recent film), able to distinguish every snowflake
in the final scene.
The film ends on a dedication – “For my son”.
A private film, then? A cautionary tale told by the family
for the family? There's no doubt its pain is intense and
the acuteness of its feelings born from familiarity. But
there are observations here that are universal and that pertain
to any marriage or relationship anywhere in the world. So,
wrap up warm – the cold bites but the truth bites harder.
This is one of the finest films in years.
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