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Climates
(Iklimler)
In 2002, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan made his mark on the Cannes competition with Distant (Uzak). That, his third feature, struck many audiences as a resounding blow in favour of the great art-cinema tradition of films as contemplative, thematically rich personal essays. Ceylan’s growing reputation as a contemporary master is confirmed by the immensely satisfying Climates, which is certainly as personal as anything we’re likely to see in Cannes, or anywhere else, this year.
The director stars opposite his wife, Ebru Ceylan, as a couple undergoing a painful break-up. But far from raising suspicions of therapeutic self-indulgence, Ceylan’s complex, subtle film will repay multiple viewings – especially given his rich, precise use of high-definition digital video. Climates should achieve healthy exports, and reinforce Ceylan as a festival presence to reckon with. The Ceylans play an Istanbul couple, Bahar (Ebru Ceylan) and Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan), first seen on a summer holiday, during which something is evidently going wrong between them. A pricelessly taut dinner with friends shows their relationship start to unravel; things come startlingly to a head during a motorbike ride. After the couple go their separate ways, university teacher Isa bumps into Serap (Kesal), an old flame with whom, it’s implied, he cheated on Bahar. Although she’s seeing a friend of his, Isa follows the glamorous Bahar home, and in a troubling extended shot, forces his attentions on her. Later, Isa follows Bahar to a remote, snowbound province where she is working on a film shoot. A rapprochement appears to be in the air, but it’s clear that Isa is not nearly as capable of change as he insists. Like its predecessor, Climates tells a complex, understated story about the emotional distance between people, and about the psychic repressions and unshakable habits that hamper men (undeniably, this is rather more Isa’s story than Bahar’s, as she is out of the picture much of the time). The maturity of Ceylan’s storytelling is evident from his refusal to tell us too much: he prefers silences and finely-tuned facial expressions provide the nuances we need to fill in the blanks for ourselves. In terms of what faces can express, without ever doing too much, Climates puts Ceylan on a par with Ingmar Bergman. In this respect, Ceylan benefits greatly from the use of high-definition, for its extreme precision in capturing shifts and uncertainties on faces, but also for its clarity in registering other aspects of people’s physical presence: moments of the film almost come across as a tenderly painted portrait of Ebru Ceylan’s hair. At once the film’s most moving and most disturbing aspect is Ceylan’s casting of himself and his wife as the troubled couple. This should not necessarily suggest that Climates is in any way an autobiographical portrait of marriage difficulties, yet Ceylan clearly wants us to be aware of, and to speculate on, the unusually close-to-home nature of his drama. It has often been apparent, however, that Ceylan is playing with aspects of his own life – the hero of Distant inhabited the director’s Istanbul flat, and here Ceylan’s own parents have affecting cameos as Isa’s mother and father. If Isa really does resemble Ceylan, then Climates surely offers one of the most merciless self-portraits ever seen in cinema: Isa is insecure, faithless and selfish, excessively needy and with a violent streak which emerges in his assault on Serap. He’s far from unlikeable, though, which bears witness to Ceylan’s warm if sometimes doleful screen presence. By virtue of her role, Ebru Ceylan is by necessity a more distant figure, but especially in those scenes where Bahar’s feeling suddenly become wordlessly apparent, she’s immensely affecting. Overall, Climates is more of a chamber drama than Ceylan’s earlier films, although the imagery gradually opens out to take in more of the poetically-shot landscapes that are a Ceylan trademark. It’s futile to argue about whether or not Climates tops Distant, but either way, Ceylan’s latest hints at a richness, complexity and subtlety of feeling that are rare even among today’s most revered blue-chip directors. In his pensive, undemonstrative way, Ceylan is making films as rewarding, and as adult, as any director alive.
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