|
|
Distant
Atilla Dorsay, Cinemaya Magazine, Summer 2003
In his new film (his third)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan goes to town. His heroes, traditionally from the rural
area, come to Istanbul in search of new dreams and new perspectives of
life. Ceylan, the lonely wolf of the Turkish cinema, insists on staying
outside the ‘system’, writing, shooting and directing all his films himself,
filming only his family or close family friends, creating thereby a unique
sense of reality. His is an essentially documentary style, but shaped
into a very refined cinema, with long shots, careful camera movements
and a precious editing style which allow him to recreate life as he sees
it in every new film: a constant rhythm, one may say, and a faithful approach
to reality, but leaving each time a different taste in the mouth, a taste
of Turkish cherry, one is inclined to say, recalling the great cineaste
who Ceylan calls his master.
Once again, he shows his passion for capturing life in a frame, combining
a natural existentialist approach with the philosophy of a wise man who
has put a lot of faith in nature. His heroes are two distant cousins from
a little town. One has already been in Istanbul for a while. He is a photographer
who, with the success of his art, has found himself a small niche in the
middle-class bourgeoisie. Selfish as he is, he does not want his ex-wife
to carry his child and give her all possible excuses to leave him. Now
he is alone and when he meets her again, although we know that he still
loves her, it is only to learn that she is going to live abroad with her
new husband. But she is not happy either, because her abortion has definitely
removed any hope of her being a mother again. The most affected in all
this is someone almost outside the story – her new man whose greatest
wish is to be a father… How far can our sins affect the lives of people
we don’t even know?
The other hero, the young cousin, is an out-and-out dreamer. His dream
is to board a ship and travel far. But what with the economic crisis,
no one is willing to recruit a new sailor. While waiting to realize his
dream, he turns into a lonely hunter chasing all the nice-looking girls
he comes across. But somehow he always falls upon intellectuals who end
up despising him and his desperate innocence. The older cousin eventually
gets bored with him and accuses him of stealing something from the house;
and even when he finds out that he is mistaken, he will not admit it.
He thus forces him to leave the house and maybe the big town. For the
older one is becoming increasingly bourgeois, he has new values now. But
you cannot change your class without paying for it. The big town is full
of lonely lives, and to share anything there is more and more difficult,
if not impossible.
Ceylan shows an Istanbul of dreams. Caught in the rare white of a snow
storm, it is at once breathtaking end menacing, gorgeous and terrible.
Istanbul as seen by Ceylan, both as director and cinematographer, becomes
a magical town, with a little old street full of half-abandoned houses,
the Bosphorus turning into an eternal stream along which the lonely ones
meet. And the human dramas interwowen in the big town turn into little
tragedies. The rhythm of life he captures so well in his documentary style
does not change much here. His obsession with nature is downplayed while
big-town human drama takes precedence. He has his own way of narrating,
a very economical and cinematographic way, which makes him a universal
artiste, and a world class director. The very long shot, for instance,
in which we learn everything about the ex-wife, about the child she has
lost and about the new husband desperately wanting a child is a masterpiece
of modern cinematic narration. Ceylan’s film impressed the Cannes jury
which gave it the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actor award for Muzaffer
Özdemir and Mehmet Emin Toprak.
As usual, Ceylan’s film is almost without music, except for a very timely
use of Mozart. His two main actors put up a wonderful performance. His
all-time favourite actor Mehmet Emin Toprak who plays the young cousin
sadly passed away in a tragic car accident, right after the prize he picked
up in the Antalya national festival. A loss very difficult to replace
for a director whose handful of main actors are much more than only actors.
They are true and unique friends.
|
