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Distant
4 stars (out of 4) "Distant" is a slow but stunning Turkish film, a beautifully crafted work that tells the kind of story only a movie can manage quite so well. A triple prize winner at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, the movie is written and directed by the brilliant young Turkish filmmaker, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. It's the tale of two relatives in the city, one sophisticated, one naïve, and how they try and fail to live with each other. "Distant" (or "Uzak") is set in Istanbul, which here seems a city of sadness and isolation, a place of minarets and drugstores, ancient streets and modern cafes, all bathed in a cold clear light that touches everything with wintry melancholy. In that city, two male cousins share an apartment. One, Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a divorced and embittered commercial photographer, whose ex-wife Nazan (Zuhal Gencer Erkaya), is about to emigrate to Canada with her new husband. His cousin from the country, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) is a callow, jobless young man dreaming of emigration himself-to America. To Mahmut, Yusuf is an undisciplined slob who doesn't clean his share of the apartment or know the urban score. Yusuf, who can't find work, sees Mahmut as tyrannical and cold. But in truth, both are taking out on each other the tensions of their days. Mahmut is pining for the wife he has never stopped loving, and his tawdry sex life (video porn and a detached lover) leave him empty. Yusuf cannot find work and is too shy to approach a neighborhood beauty (Ebru Ceylan). His dreams are slowly dying; Mahmut's, perhaps, are already dead. Soon, too soon, these two will be apart. And the movie suggests a profound but uncomfortable truth: We rarely appreciate people near to us until afterwards. Sometimes, we only come to understand them-and the consequences of our own selfishness and short-sightedness-after they are gone. It's a simple story. But Ceylan (whose lovely "Clouds of May" played at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2002), tells it with compassion, perception and sometimes mesmerizing visual beauty. A photographer like Mahmut, Ceylan shot this film and his images make Istanbul come alive in ways few films or filmmakers have managed. The way the light falls on distant windows or glints on the breaking waves begin to reflect bottled emotion and moods that cannot be expressed as fully in language. In addition, few recent movies have expressed so well the pressure and grief of a great city. "Distant" won the best actor award at Cannes for both Ozdemir and Toprak (who tragically died in a motorcycle accident after winning the Turkish Oscar for the same role). It also won the Cannesrunner-up and FIPRESCI International Critics' prizes and was runner-up at the 2003 Chicago International Film Festival. Among the actors Ozdemir and Toprak beat at Cannes were this year's American Oscar winners Sean Penn and Tim Robbins of "Mystic River." Truth to tell, I thought Penn
and Robbins deserved to win at Cannes too. But "Distant" and
its actors and director deserved their recognition. In their fine portrayal
of people apart, they have proven that they are artists apart as well.
In our commerce-obsessed time, "Distant" may be a movie of minor
economic impact. But it is also a Chekhovian tale of major artistic power.
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