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A
bleak take on human condition
JEFF SAWTELL, Morning Star (UK),
28 May 2004
Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2003, Uzak -
"distant" - is a beautiful uncompromising art-house film designed
to depress, writes JEFF SAWTELL.
Uzak tells the tale of melancholic
Turkish photographer Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) and his country cousin
Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) who comes to Istanbul supposedly looking for
work on a ship.
We watch transfixed as he crosses a frozen river, the camera unmoving.
The sound silent, he approaches in real time, wandering up the bank, walking
towards the camera, then turning to his right, the camera still pointing
forward.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the camera swings left to reveal a road. A truck
is approaching. Yusuf steps out and thumbs a lift - the titles roll.
Meanwhile, Mahmut waits outside a door for ages until a woman comes out
and gets in a car and drives away.
Shot after shot, faces stare, ships glide by, cars come and go, cigarettes
are smoked, questions go unanswered, each and everything seems pointless.
Even the mouse trap fails to work, the ice thaws and the misery goes on.
We learn that Yusuf is a man who, having lost his love, has also lost
his self-esteem and has not fulfilled his early artistic ambitions.
The irksome problems of the layabout are much more urgent - he has no
kind of life to bemoan.
Slowly, the cousins drive each other to distraction. Nice if you like
to wallow, but not if you want to escape for a while.
Every sound starts to grate, everything that you once considered beautiful
suddenly becomes grey.
The guy who got off his arse hasn't found happiness. And the guy who doesn't
have a clue simply disappears.
Uzak is a bleak perspective of the human condition, especially in a world
wracked by economic stagnation, exploitation and the usual attributes
of a system that simply does not care. See it and weep.
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