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Keeping
it all in the family
Joan Dupont, Herald Tribune, May 24-25, 2003
.........
The film "Uzak" - the word means "distant" in Turkish
- is another kind of reportage, the quietest kind, about emotional isolation.
The scene is set in an Istanbul under snow, and most of the action takes
place in an apartment shared by two cousins who skirt each other without
connecting. The somber subject is treated with such grace and moments
of wit, that the film captivated audiences here.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 43, who wrote and directed the film, was also behind
the camera and at the editing table. His wife plays an alluring neighbor,
his mother plays the hero's mother. And a cousin, Mehmet Emin Toprak,
plays Yusuf, the rustic young relative who has come to town to find work.
He is taken in by Mahmut, a successful photographer, played by Muzaffer
Ozdemir, an artist friend of the director's.
Ceylan's first short, "Koza" (Cocoon), a 20-minute black-and-white
film without dialogue, was about a couple who are separated and who try
to get together again. In "Uzak," he says, "The man has
left the woman, but he sees that his life is not that rewarding, that
he has nothing really outside his ex-wife."
"All my films have been about the distance between people,"
Ceylan adds. "When I was young, I felt the distance between myself
and the rest of the world. Art and cinema did me good and helped me make
peace with this feeling."
The camera follows the lonely course of the two main characters and captures
funny scenes, moments that surge out of their awkward cohabitation. The
photographer feels alienated. "He doesn't know what he has lost,
only that something is missing." He lays traps for mice and gets
stuck in them. Everyday, he feels more stuck, awkward and impatient because
his unwanted company is staying on.
"He has to take the cousin in," the director says. "It's
a tradition. But he never realized that it might drag on, and he begins
to suffer. When the time comes to help, he can't. When people come to
visit, you feel the burden, and it makes you feel guilty."
"The film is a criticism of how we live in cities," Ceylan says.
"I see how my intellectual friends live in Istanbul; their hopes
fade and they have nothing to turn to. In villages, people help each other
- in the village I came from, there was a house where a hot meal was served
every day for people who had less. But in city life, people are more reserved.
We create our own prisons.
"The city has hardships, anonymity, unemployment. Turkey is one of
the most famous countries for hospitality, but we're losing it because
we want to be like Western cities." Ceylan went to engineering school
and then pursued film studies in Istanbul and London. "I saw three
movies a day, and picked up filmmaking on my own." Like his hero,
he was a photographer first. His production company, NBC Film, is financed
from the sales and distribution of his films. "That way, I don't
have to wait for funding."
Soon after the movie was made, his Ceylan's cousin Mehmet, who had made
a stunning debut as Yusuf, died in an automobile accident. He went to
pick up a prize in Ankara in December and was killed driving home to his
village.
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