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Modern
Istanbul provides sublime map to the human condition
Michael Booth, Denver Post (USA), 14 May 2004
The award-winning Turkish movie
"Distant" is a beautiful poem, not a full story but a melancholy
moving-photo album of two people struggling hard to span human isolation
- though not struggling quite hard enough.
Writer, director and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan paints a moody and
sublime portrait of a post-industrial Istanbul that might as well be Cleveland
or Detroit.
The unemployed stand on snowy piers gazing at abandoned harbors, dead
smokestacks meeting a slate-gray sky in the distance. The wreckage of
useless ships and the desolation of labor offices surround these characters,
and the modern cellphones and flat screens awaiting them in warm apartments
offer no comfort.
Ceylan's actors - his whole nation, really - are stuck between a dying
past and an electronically enhanced future, often surrendering to the
tension by sitting bored in front of a television. That kind of ennui
doesn't really need subtitles, does it?
The ostensible plot line of "Distant" follows a few weeks in
the life of Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir), a commercial photographer damped
down by the tedium of snapping shots of floor tiles for a local factory.
He seems to pine for his ex-wife but can't summon the energy to bring
her back.
A distant cousin, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak), hitchhikes into Istanbul
from the hinterlands. He asks Mahmut for a room while he looks for work
on a ship, dreaming of world travel and paychecks to send home to Mom.
Much of "Distant" is a silent movie, at least for fans of dialogue.
Mahmut sits smoking in cafes, speaking to no one. Yusuf treads the snowy
streets looking for a ship, and follows young women around town, seeking
but never finding the courage to actually speak to them. Dogs bark and
children laugh, but far in the distance.
All this quietude allows us to underline for ourselves the sharp contrast
in the paths of Mahmut and Yusuf. Yusuf is desperate for work, and Mahmut
would love to lose the work he's got. Yusuf is so ready to engage life
and love that it looks like the desire is giving him an early ulcer, while
Mahmut's senses are so dulled he retreats from any thought or emotion
coming his way.
They are so alone in Istanbul they could be two sides of the same brain.
Maybe Yusuf is nothing more than a last visitation of Mahmut's old enthusiasms
and drive to succeed as he contemplates a life change.
They could make a pair, these two sad sacks. But this is Europe, not a
Hollywood soundstage, and thus "The Odd Couple" will remain
only a bad rerun that Mahmut might catch late at night on his constantly
blaring television.
Ceylan is a master at showing life's tiny indignities, its petty cruelties,
or the lie represented by a gesture if not a word. There is no simple
sense of uplift in "Distant." But there is an exhilaration to
revealing the human condition, and Ceylan is ever on the lookout.
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