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Best
Films of the Year 2004
Distant - Writer
and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film is a sharp examination of human
alienation demonstrated with a town-and-country conflict in modern Istanbul.
Muzaffer Özdemir and Emin Toprak are brilliant as casual acquaintances/cousins
living together in an apartment. One is a big-city success, the other
a rural manual laborer. This is not a film about the haves and have-nots
(for that, watch Dogville's bewildering end credits); this is a meditative
poem of human longing and emotional inaccessibility. It may not put a
spring in your step, but it will make you feel alive.
Lucas Stensland, Culture
Dose (USA), January 15, 2005
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"...
A formally beautiful and imaginative yet profoundly moving and thoughtful
study of the idea of reality and separation."
Professor Paul Coates,
Aberdeen University, December 2004
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"...
A stunning film, almost flawless in its documentation of the struggles,
complexities and banalities of everyday life."
Jeff Geiger, Film Studies
Director, America Studies Centre, December 2004
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"...
An unexpected masterpiece from Istanbul that wrung big themes out of the
tiny circumstances of an urban sophisticate sharing his just-so apartment
with a country bumpkin cousin looking for work in the big city. Everything
shown is both beautifully photographed and utterly realistic. It's the
most exquisitely elegant and haunting slow-burn treat of the past five
years. A near-perfect affirmation of film realism as an art form."
Nick James, British Film
Institute, December 2004
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Distant
(GRADE: A )
There are no pleasures, as we know
them, in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Distant," and that, in some immeasurable
way, is pleasure enough. This beautiful Turkish buddy movie is the quietest,
most candid film in some time about the small realities that come with
a certain age or station in life. Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) has come
to Istanbul from his village with dreams of working on ships. He moves
in with his cousin Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir). Yusuf is careless, slovenly
and touched with more than a bit of sloth. Mahmut's no prize, either.
A commercial photographer who has toiled his way to bourgeois success,
he exhales condescension. Ceylan has a wondrous sense of how to conjure
unhappiness, but he also has a generous respect for life and the finesse
to dam off the melancholy. He pushes "Distant," which won the
2003 jury prize at Cannes, toward neither comedy nor drama in the conventional
sense.
Seattle Post (USA), January
28, 2005
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Uzak
Now I have to admit that the thought
of spending an evening watching a Turkish arthouse movie did not exactly
fill me with excitement, but I sweated it out and in part – it was worth
it… The film provides a thoughtful insight into the lives of the men as
they drift through each day- simply existing… The artistic treatment of
the film cleverly reflects the desperate isolation of the men. Each frame
is grey and uninspiring. I was sat in an almost hypnotic state as the
shots and the silence lingered. There is little dialogue and no music,
just the occasional birdsong or windchime. But it works…there is real
insight into alienation, you feel the men’s frustration and the acting
is excellent…
Emma B, Meridian
Tv (UK), 17 June 2004
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Uzak
****
The winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes
a year ago, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film is a graceful study of two cousins:
the fussy Mahmut (Mustaffer Ozdemir), who is doing all right for himself
as a photographer in Istanbul, and the gauche Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak),
who comes from the sticks to stay with Mahmut while looking aimlessly
for work in the city. Lonely and unfulfilled, Mahmut might be thought
to need all the friends he can get, but he and Yusuf do not hit it off.
As their incompatibility shows itself in subdued awkwardness rather than
big confrontations, this is not a film for anyone hooked on melodrama,
but in its quiet way, it is head-clearingly poignant. Every scene deepens
our understanding of the characters and nothing is falsely smoothed away.
The film’s prevailing melancholy is affecting because it feels truthful,
and one reason it feels truthful is that it is broken by occasional moments
of comedy.
Edward Porter, Sunday
Times (UK), 31 May 2004
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Uzak
Review ****
Uzak,an award-winning Turkish film,
is an affectingly tale about two cousins...The joy of the film is watching
how they interact, you get a very real feel for their difficulties...
Both actors do give excellent performances, Toprak slightly shades it
merely because his character, the luckless younger cousin man who simply
wants to get a job, is the more sympathetic.
Where Uzak as a film truly succeeds is in the fact that this is grim view
of real lives and sadly its recognisable as such. It comes with unhappiness,
a longing for something better, a desire to escape the daily monotony,
with both men looking at women and wishing they could make a first move
but without the confidence to say what they feel. It may not sound like
a barrel of laughs but its capture of a sense of realism is second-to-none
and the build-up of tension between the two men (landlord cousin finding
fault in behaviour of his relative) is well handled. One hopes Uzak will
find decent-sized audiences, it deserves to.
Matt Arnoldi, Fazed.com,
May 2004
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Uzak
Thirty-something Mahmut lives alone
in his book-lined, well-off flat in Istanbul. Then his cousin Yusuf arrives
from the country looking for work and a place to stay. Mahmut takes him
in on the understanding that Yusuf won’t be there for ever and they do
very little to lessen the distance between them. Life rolls along, sometimes
funny, sometimes not. Gradually the outwardly cool Mahmut and the soulful
Yusuf begin to get under the audience’s skin in a manner rarely captured
on film.
Phoenix (UK), 30
May 2004
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It's
a new Ice Age - cool
... In a weird bit of serendipity,
one of the week's other releases has a ship jutting on its side out of
a frozen harbour just like Emmerich's Staten Island ferry. It's called
Uzak, and the similarities pretty much end there, in that it's slow, and
Turkish, and mesmerising.
The title of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film translates as Distant, an idea informing
every image and even the music, which seems to be coming from far away,
only half-connecting with our emotions. It's a wryly desolate portrait
of the personal gulf between an Istanbul photographer (Muzaffer Özdemir)
and his cousin from the country (the late Mehmet Emin Toprak), who shacks
up with him and proves a rather smelly irritation in his life.
There's a very funny scene in which Özdemir is thwarted in his attempts
to watch a porn video, but most remarkable here is Ceylan's ability to
turn a simple matter of camera placement into a sense of cosmic loneliness.
Tim Robey, The Daily
Telegraph (UK), 28.05.2004
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UZAK
Nothing much happens in Uzak, the third
film from emerging Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A young man, Yusef
(Toprak), hitches from the countryside to his cousin Mahmut’s (Özdemir)
apartment in Istanbul in the hope of securing work in the shipping industry.
The title translates as "Distant",
which is as much comment on the gap between the audience and the film
as it is on the unbridgeable chasm between Mahmut and Yusef. Ceylan shoots
in long, languorous takes, but he rarely gives us any close-ups of either
men. The point is that both are desperately lonely, yet neither finds
comfort in the other.
It’s a heartbreaking situation
for Yusaf, whose migration to the city has forced him to leave behind
everything he knows. You’ll feel less sorry for Mahmut, who has allowed
his satisfaction at his own achievements to mutate into a miserable state
of isolation.
Still, there’s
something unbearably sad about Mahmut that forces you to try and empathise
with his situation. And that’s Ceylan’s skill. For such a stripped-down
film, this manages to do a rare thing by reflecting the numbing nature
of modern life in a manner that’s thoroughly involving.
ALISTAIR HARKNESS, Scotsman
(UK), 27 May 2004
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Apocalypse
tomorrow
Sukhdev Sandhu feels cleansed by Michael
Haneke's tale of bleak severity, and is cheered by a deceptive Turkish
entry
.....
Turkish films have rarely featured prominently at Cannes in the two decades
since Yilmaz Guney's Yol won the Palme d'Or. It's cheering, then, that
the best-received movie so far this festival has been Nuri Bilge Ceylan's
Uzak ("Distant"). It's a lovely and deceptively quiet film that
explores themes of friendship and urban loneliness with considerable insight
and lasting emotional resonance.
Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) has come to Istanbul to stay with an old friend,
Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir), after the factory in his home village shuts
down. He has vague ideas about becoming a seaman, but soon finds that
he prefers to spend his days drifting through the city and glancing at
pretty girls. Mahmut, a photographer, is irritated by the disruptions
to his solitary regime that Yusuf causes and troubled by the decision
of his former wife to emigrate to Canada.
Ceylan conveys a palpable sense of how time is ebbing away for both the
friends who are united in their contrasting estrangements. The scenes
he sets in snow-covered Istanbul, from early morning side roads to deserted
quaysides, are evocatively shot, too. All told, Uzak is a marvellous tribute
to the acting talents of Toprak, who died shortly after the film was made.
Sukhdev Sandhu,
Daily Telegraph (UK), 21 May 2004
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Uzak/Distant
by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Having heard such high praise for it, my expectations
were very low for this film. A few people complained it was too slow,
but everyone raved about it regardless. I thought this was because of
the political agenda attached to its country of origin's current pre-EU
status. I was completely and utterly surprised! The acting by the two
main actors was mesmerizing. In a movie where nothing much happens, the
amount of tension gradually building throughout the film was unbearable
by the end. The scarce dialogue was well written and naturally carried-out.
Nothing seemed forced or unbelievable. Uzak was mostly very slight with
a few rough disturbances here and there. In the end, we knew more about
the characters than ever possible without the overwhelming indulgence
in biographical details.
Pippoth O. Amusa, MasturbaTory
Zine (USA), May 2004
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Nuri
Bilge Ceylan
Although Nuri Bilge Ceylan has only made three feature
length films his work is so
stunning and sublime that it deserves a fitting recognition; so the NFT
is devoting a short
season to this Turkish director.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film, Uzak (Distant), was awarded not only
the Grand Prix at
Cannes 2003 but the Best Actor prize (jointly) for Muzaffer Ozdemir and
Mehmet Emin
Toprak. His most critically successful film yet, Uzak receives a Special
Preview
screening at the NFT on 6th May. Mahmut is a successful photographer and
is well
established in Istanbul. When his cousin, Yusuf, is made redundant from
his factory job,
Yusuf leaves the countryside for the city so that he may find work. Moving
in with
Mahmut the relationship between the two is awkward and jarring. But the
honest
observations of character differences provide a humorous yet emotive portrayal
of
affluent city life versus the poverty of rural Turkey. Shot in Ceylan’s
real-life apartment,
Yusuf is played by his own cousin, whilst Mahmut is a friend rather than
a professional
actor.
Proving himself as a true auteur, Ceylan is also cinematographer, screenwriter,
producer
and editor on his films, working with a minimal crew. This only reinforces
the strength of
his talent as he creates work of honesty, sadness and humour with a great
appreciation
for the subtleties of human relationships. One should definitely keep
eyes on Ceylan as
he is likely to be seen as one of the strongest Turkish exports to compare
with
Kiarostami or Edward Yang.
BFI News (British
Film Institute), May 2004
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Distant
... "The film possesses a view of the human condition
nearly as stark and clear-eyed as its stunning cinematography, which paints
Istanbul's domes and minarets and rural Anatolia's breathtaking landscapes
with a cold, haunting beauty..."
Colin Covert, Minneapolis
Star Tribune (USA), May 2004
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Distant
DISTANT (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) is a masterpiece
of economical storytelling. A young hick, driven by economic recession,
goes to Istanbul to look for work. He stays with his older cousin, a photographer
whose life is quietly crumbling. Ceylan makes us sit back and watch the
minutiae of their daily life – a lot of television gets watched, a lot
of tea gets drunk, and suddenly, tiny, apparently insignificant events
are awash in meaning. The building up of incidents has a cumulative effect
that is quite moving. This story could have been told with violins and
floods of tears, but it wouldn't have felt nearly as intense as it is
here, revealed with subtle irony and meticulous realism.
Wendy Banks, Now Toronto,
March 2004
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"Tip
of the Week" - Distant
Turkish writer-producer-director-cinematographer
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 2002 Cannes-prize-winning "Distant" (Uzak)
is a memorably intimate exploration of closed-off personalities, quietly
fashioned after the obsessive, intimate style of Bergman and Tarkovsky.
Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir, a nonactor and friend of Ceylan's) plays a 40-year-old
Istanbul photographer who's left his home village behind, and a marriage,
too. He works commercial jobs, whiles his days watching Tarkovsky's "Stalker"
or girl-on-girl porn, brooding in smoky cafes, having impersonal affairs.
Enter Yusuf (the late Emin Toprak), a younger, angry relative from the
village (and an actual relative of the director). Ceylan takes Kiarostami's
use of non-actors and actual settings a little farther by using his own
apartment, his own car, his own view of his Istanbul, for the main characters'.
The plot, such as there is, is a slow burn. It perambulates rather than
deciphers, ambles instead of defining. There's much use of filters, stately
widescreen compositions and rich, telling sound design. It is very sad
but also very beautiful. (Particularly after snow flocks the gray-on-gray
city.) There is one breathtaking moment, a scene involving a beached tanker
in snow, that is merely the best of dozens of memorable fragments.
Ray Pride, Newcity Chicago,
9 April 2004
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Distant
Picking up where his Clouds of
May left off, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's consummate study of urban alienation
confirms the Turkish writer-director-photographer-editor's status as a
one-man band of virtuosic proportions, the first auteur of the 21st century.
The Istanbul-set story is Ceylan's Tarkovsky-infused version of the children's
parable about the country mouse and his rich city cousin. (Chabrol, Angelopoulos,
and Antonioni also come to mind.) Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a divorced
artist-turned-industrial photographer who has turned away from the outside
world, preferring an inner-directed, Spartan existence with intractable
daily rituals. Arriving in search of work--and proceeding to tear his
routine apart--is Mahmut's unemployed relative Yusuf (played by Mehmet
Emin Toprak, who died the day after the film was accepted at Cannes, where
it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actor award, shared by both leads).
Much of Distant's intellectual pleasure derives from Ceylan's meticulous
style as evidenced in the deliberate pacing, the compositions, and the
attention to detail both inside Mahmut's apartment and on location on
the snowy streets of a city suffering its harshest winter in recent memory.
While moments of sly humor abound (e.g., the deeply isolated Mahmut's
repeated efforts to capture a mouse or sneak a few private moments in
front of the TV after his guest has gone to bed), Ceylan is out to accumulate
the weight of emotion through precision. And he succeeds in the most masterful
way.
Mark Peranson, City Pages
(USA), April 2004
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Relative
strangers
Winner of the 2003 Cannes Film
Festival's Grand Prix, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan skims along
on a deceptively placid surface. Under this quiet, however, roil currents
of guilt, familial obligations and abandonment.
The film's title refers to both the relationship between jaded city dweller
Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) and his distant relative, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin
Toprak), and the connection Mahmut carefully maintains with the world
around him. Years earlier, Mahmut arrived in Istanbul a penniless idealist,
his heart filled with dreams of making films in the manner of Tarkovsky.
A more disillusioned Mahmut now makes a very comfortable living as a commercial
photographer for a tile manufacturer.
Once married, Mahmut now lives alone and avoids contact with the people
to whom he was once close. He screens his mother's calls and spends most
of his free time watching TV or eating in cafés, always by himself. Into
this isolated world steps Yusuf, an unemployed factory worker who hails
from the same small town as Mahmut but has come to Istanbul under more
desperate circumstances. The economic crisis gripping Turkey has reached
his tiny town, forcing the local factory to lay off 1000 workers, including
Yusuf and his father. Yusuf hopes to find work on a freighter while staying
with Mahmut, but jobs are scarce in the city as well, and it's clear from
the outset that Mahmut has no interest in Yusuf's plight and won't lift
a finger to help him. It's also apparent that Mahmut finds his country
cousin an unpalatable roommate: He can't bear the odor emanating from
Yusuf's shoes and finds his personal habits slovenly at best. But his
aversion runs deeper than that, and when his ever-increasing impatience
finally explodes into outright rage, it becomes clear that his disgust
has less to do with Yusuf than with himself.
Mahmut isn't the only artist enamored of Tarkovsky's technique: Ceylan's
film comprises a series of long takes, often in medium to long shot, and
their meaning gradually seeps through over time. There's also very little
dialogue, but what there is is often very funny, and Ceylan is a master
of the dead-pan visual gags that reveal volumes about his character. After
Yusuf calls it a night after fidgeting through half of STALKER, Mahmut,
the great Tarkovsky lover, pops in a porno.
Ozdemir and Toprak, the director's cousin, shared the Best Actor Award
at Cannes, and are equally superb.
Ken Fox, TV Guide.com
(New York), 22 March 2004
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Distant
Though the furthest thing from
effects-laden spectacle, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's mesmerizing
Distant needs to be seen in a movie theater, because without the subtle
impact of its photography and soundtrack, it wouldn't amount to much of
anything.
A deadpan comedy/drama that details the chilly relationship between an
urbanite loner and his visiting cousin from the sticks, the film recalls
the odd-couple dynamic in Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, but with
even less incident. In a medium primed for movement and action, it's tough
to make ennui register for audiences as something other than outright
boredom, but Ceylan sustains a precise, evocative mood that's saturated
with melancholy.
An emerging name in world cinema, Ceylan has drawn comparisons to Andrei
Tarkovsky (whose Stalker plays on TV in one scene) and Abbas Kiarostami,
but his long takes and funny/sad look at urban alienation have more in
common with Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang (What Time Is It There?), almost
like a mirror image from the other side of the continent.
The slow-burning tension in Distant only manifests itself in one melodramatic
scene, yet the film communicates everything it needs to about the ever-widening
gulf that separates two men from each other and the world around them.
Living a comfortable middle-class existence in Istanbul, photographer
Muzaffer Özdemir numbs the pain of a recent divorce through discreet sessions
with a prostitute, but his sadness swells when his ex-wife announces that
she's moving to Canada to start a new life with someone else. A clean,
fastidious, and antisocial personality, Özdemir finds his sanctuary broken
when his cousin Emin Toprak, a slovenly simpleton from his old hometown,
comes to stay with him while looking for work on a ship. After quickly
finding that the recession is as bad in Istanbul as it is in the country,
Toprak spends the days and weeks wandering the city aimlessly, trying
(and failing) to work up the courage to approach various young women.
These men have loneliness in common, but they certainly don't turn to
each other for company—especially Özdemir, who drives Toprak out of the
room by flipping to soporific TV shows, then pops in a porno tape after
he leaves.
More often than not, Ceylan favors camera and sound effects over dialogue
and action to suggest their feelings of remove, blurring the foreground
or background of a shot to make focal distance seem physical or suffusing
scenes with the far-off horns and lapping waves of the harbor. While it
takes a little patience to engage with it, Distant has an indelible sense
of city life that can't be expressed in words.
Scott Tobias, The Onion
A.V.Club, March 10, 2004
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Distant
Turkish director Nuri-Bilge Ceylan’s
third feature film, the 2003 Cannes Grand Jury recipient of both the best
picture award and a citation for its two lead male actors — the younger
of whom, Emin Toprak, died in a car accident the day after the film received
the festival invite — is an acute cinematic confrontation with the alienating
permutations of living life in a big city, namely Istanbul.
An astute character study appropriately
set in a melancholic winter, Distant is a point of view tale of middle-aged
country-turned-city dweller Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir) and country-trying-to-turn-city
boy Yusuf (Toprak), a youth seeking work in Istanbul to support his family.
As distant cousins, Yusuf turns to Mahmut, now an established yet disillusioned
commercial photographer, for temporary lodging and assistance in braving
this new world. But as echoes of Yusuf’s small town mentality and naiveté
invade Mahmut‘s firmly entrenched solitary existence, he’s quickly frazzled
to the core by both the spatial intrusion and mounting personal problems
with an ex-wife.
Ceylan makes it difficult to decide
who’s more sympathetic, as even a simple trip through the country on the
way to a photo shoot, with Yousef acting as his assistant, reveals both
Mahmut’s unhealthy desire for respect and admiration, and Yusuf‘s minimal
work ethic. Meanwhile, the camera consistently balances the sad struggle
of these two wandering souls with vast spaces that often reveal broad
humor born from the awkward domestic interactions of this new daily coexistence,
mining details like the repeated stench and according placement of Yusuf’s
shoes.
Ultimately it’s the ridiculous
and isolating underpinnings of such routines — Mahmut’s need to aimlessly
surf the internet in silence and alone — combined with Yusuf’s inability
to provide that fundamental requirement in any large city — respectful
space — that dissolves any possibility of friendship. As time passes and
Yusuf is unable to locate work, his voiceless, stunned stares at the city
only meet with Mahmut’s selfish silent reluctance to keep him around.
A confrontation between the two
is all that the simmering tension requires, eliciting the stinging character
indictments that finally move Yusuf to action and Mahmut towards resignation,
however unsure and indecisive.
Toprak’s untimely death adds an
eerie sense of immediacy to Ceylan’s masterfully quiet, powerfully melancholic
tale of the ephemeral poignancy of missed communication.
Ryan J. Noth, Exclaim
(Canada), March 26, 2004
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Uzak
(Distant)
Won the Grand Prize of the Jury
in Cannes and the Best Actor award for Muzaffer Özdemir and Emin Toprak,
who play a jaded industrial photographer and his lazy country cousin respectively.
Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan gets compared to Kiarostami, Tarkovsky and
even Anton Chekhov, bless him. Even though the two men are holed up in
the photographer's classy Istanbul flat, Ceylan makes the distance between
them palpable. The yokel is young, but not full of energy. The photographer
is looking back on all the wrong turns he made in life (this is where
Chekhov comes in). Not even a trip to photogenic Anatolia can cheer him
up. The melancholy is strangely soothing. Few filmmakers can make semi-emptiness
seem so entrancing.
Thessa Mooij, Kamera (UK),
Jan 2003
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Uzak
Visuals and sound from snow-covered
Istanbul are breathtaking in one of the top films of the year; sad and
funny, human and intimate, personal and universal. About the world of
a big-city photographer and his country cousin and the distance between
them.
The meticulously organised loneliness
of the divorced photographer Mahmut is disrupted when his nephew Yusuf
comes to stay with him. Mahmut is a successful advertising photographer
in Istanbul, the younger Yusuf comes from the countryside to the city
to look for work as a merchant seaman. While Mahmut obviously has difficulty
with the presence of his uninvited guest, the well-intentioned yet socially
handicapped Yusuf finds it equally difficult to find his feet in the city.
It is hard to get a job and making contact with the cynical intellectual
Mahmut is even harder. A short business trip to the countryside doesn't
help bring the two closer together. The lonely men live their lives almost
without words. Mahmut's life is set almost entirely indoors, while Yusuf
roams a snow-covered Istanbul that is depicted by Ceylan with breathtaking
beauty -picturesque and sharply honed -in sound and pictures.
Ceylan -responsible
for production, screenplay, camera and cutting, as in his previous films
Kasaba en Clouds of May -is a master in revealing the characters of the
two protagonists, their all-too-human frustrations and dreams, in a way
that will stay with us for a long time. Authors' cinema at its most beautiful.
Protagonist Toprak (Yusuf) was killed in a car crash shortly after the
first screening. Posthumously, he was given the prize for the best actor
in Cannes, together with Özdemir (Mahmut). Uzak won the Grand Jury Prize
there.
Rotterdam FF (Holland),
Jan 2004
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Distant
Picking up where Clouds of May left off, Nuri Bilge
Ceylan's consummately made study of urban alienation, Distant, confirms
the Turkish writer-director-photographer-editor's status as one of the
world's up-and-coming auteurs. The Istanbul-set story is Ceylan's Tarkovsky-infused
version of the children's parable about the country mouse and his rich
city cousin; Angelopolous and Antonioni also come to mind, and these comparisons
are merited. Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a divorced industrial photographer
who has turned away from the outside world, preferring an inner-directed,
Spartan existence with intractable daily rituals. When his unemployed
relative, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak, who died the day after Distant was
accepted for Cannes) arrives in search of work, Mahmut's routine slowly
cracks apart.
Much of Distant's intellectual pleasure derives from Ceylan's meticulous
style, both in terms of the deliberate pacing, composition, and attention
to detail both inside of Mahmut's apartment and on location on the snowy
streets of a city suffering its harshest winter in recent memory. While
there are moments of sly humour, witnessed in the deeply isolated Mahmut's
repeated efforts to capture a mouse, or sneak a few private video moments
after Yusuf has gone to bed, Ceylan is out to accumulate the weight of
emotion through precision, and succeeds admirably. Arriving with two major
awards--the runner-up Grand Jury prize and a shared acting prize for its
leads--from Cannes, where it was also the favourite of many international
critics, Distant is surely one of the films of the year.
Vancouver FF (Canada),
Sept 2003
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Distant
We head back to the Teatro Principal to see Zabaltegi
selection of San Sebastian and multiple Cannes winner "Uzak"
and manage to follow the Turkish film pretty well even with the (then)
unexpected Spanish only subtitles. Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir) is a photographer
in Istanbul who lives in a stylish and fastidiously maintained apartment.
He is disturbed by noises in a cabinet that may indicate rodents and spends
most of his time watching TV. Country cousin Yusuf (Emin Toprak) arrives
and throws Mahmut's lifestyle into disarray. Yusuf spends his time smoking
cigarettes and following a woman throughout the city (he stops only when
she enters a cinema, allowing his voyeurism to pass to her). When Mahmut
travels to his sister's to visit his dying mother, Yusuf takes Mahmut's
place in front of the TV but his sloppy habits infuriate Mahmut when he
returns. After a comical confrontation between the two over their different
approaches to ridding the kitchen of its mouse, Yusuf leaves Mahmut's
without a word. Mahmut discovers Yusuf's cigarette pack and drives to
a bench overlooking the city to smoke. This quiet film is a lovely character
study of how people miss the very ones who irritate in their presence.
Director Nuri Bilge accentuates his two protagonists in foreground with
unfocussed backgrounds and uses the melancholy sounds of winter for Yusuf's
opening's journey through the countryside and to signal his absence at
film's end. B+
Laura Clifford, Reeling
Reviews, Massachusetts (USA), Sept 19, 2003
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Distant
One problem with a film festival like San Sebastián
– a fest that focuses mainly on Spanish language films. Is that sometimes
you sit down to watch a movie like “Uzak” only to discover it is subtitled
in the host country´s language. But, for someone like me who refuses to
walk out on a film after investing my time, it can lead to some interesting
experiences.
In “Uzak,” an Istanbul photographer is obliged to take in a young relative
who has come to the city to find a job aboard a ship to take him to new
lands and adventures. But, the younger man is not very ambitious and becomes
a permanent fixture in the photographer´s home. This living condition
is tolerated until the photographer is called away to care for his ailing
mother and the boarder is left in the flat alone. When he returns, the
photographer is shocked to find his home in slovenly condition and he
castigates his roommate for being a slob. What remains is an underlying
conflict that must be resolved one way or another.
I spent nearly two hours trying to decipher the subtitles with my poor
Spanish while the little drama unfolded on the screen. Thankfully, the
dialog is minimal and the emotions of the characters so pronounced that
I felt compelled to stay for the entire film. This little drama is definitely
for the true film buff, and not the average movie goer, as it provides
a slice of Turkish life through the eyes of its two main characters.
Helmer Nuri Bilge Ceylan tells his simple story with a sense of elegance
with his sparse yet evocative screenplay and camera – kept mainly in static
shots – that keeps you guessing as to what is going to happen. Will the
photographer´s roommate snap and run amok? You are left to wonder about
such things as the country boy follows a pretty young woman through the
streets of Istanbul or glares at his benefactor after being scolded for
the slob that he is. In the end, I was satisfied with the slice of Turkish
life..
Robin
Clifford, Reeling Reviews, Massachusetts (USA), Sept 19, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Cream
of the screen
S.F. Said picks the highlights
of the London Film Festival, which opens next week
Cannes prize-winner Uzak, from Turkey's Nuri Bilge
Ceylan, is perhaps the most accomplished piece of film-making in the festival.
An unabashed art movie about the spaces between people, it's visually
stunning, quietly wry, ultimately devastating.
S.F.Said, Daily Telegraph
(England), Oct 17, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
This double Cannes-winner is a lovely examination of
human interaction that never goes quite where you think it will, mixing
comedy and drama for a kind of bittersweet Turkish Odd Couple. Mahmut
(Ozdemir) is an Istanbul photographer who is extremely set in his ways
after his divorce from Nazan (Erkaya), who's just about to move to Canada
with her new husband. He has his job down to a quiet routine that has
just the right amount of space for a mistress (Kirilmis). Then life is
disrupted by his childhood friend Yusuf (Toprak) arriving from their remote
hometown to find work. Yusuf is idealistic and unrealistic, completely
unprepared for the big city. And he's also not nearly tidy enough for
the fastidious Mahmut, who we watch quietly bristling at each "insult".
But Yusuf needs him, so what can he do about it?
The film is virtually wordless as we watch the characters dealing with
each other, often spying or prowling through private things. There's a
gentle but sharp humour at work here; their lifelong friendship only barely
covers over a general mistrust. And the actors are brilliant at capturing
this both individually and together (they shared the Best Actor award
at Cannes; Toprak posthumously, as he was killed in a car crash just after
the film's release). Meanwhile, director Ceylan catches a side of Turkey
we rarely see on screen, namely the icy beauty of winter in Istanbul contrasted
against the decaying empire. The film looks fantastic, and makes excellent
use of settings both indoors and out to get into the minds of these increasingly
internalised characters. It's fascinating to watch them strain against
each other in the kindest ways possible, hiding their annoyance as well
as personal obsessions that would give them common ground if they could
only share them! The growing distance between them is the film's theme.
And on a very bad day for Mahmut it finally boils over with surprising
results. Simply beautiful filmmaking.
Rich Cline, Shadows, London,
Oct 30, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Featured
Film: Uzak (Distant)
Triumph has been tinged by tragedy for the people
behind one of the best films of the year.
There have been a few poignant film-related tragedies
this year. In Venice, the winning of the Golden Lion by The Return was
tarnished by the news that its young star had died in a drowning accident.
When Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak won the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes a few
months earlier, there was a similar sinking of the hearts when critics
- who couldn’t contain their liking for the Turkish film - learned that
one of its two stars had died, just a short while before, in a car crash.
Rather than extraneous detail, such news somehow lives with a film, and
rightly so. Ceylan’s work is personal in every sense - at times autographical,
always deeply felt, often featuring his relatives in the cast. Mehmet
Emin Toprak was Ceylan’s cousin and had acted in all of the director’s
films. He died on the day they all learned of its selection for Cannes,
where he was to share, posthumously, the acting prize with his co-star
Muzaffer Ozdemir.
For Ceylan himself, the film confirms the promise of The Small Town and
Clouds of May, and his status as a world-class filmmaker. Uzak (Distant)
is effectively a two-hander, between Mahmut (Ozdemir), a photographer
in his mid-Forties, divorced, living a quiet and committedly insular life,
and his country cousin Yusef (Toprak), in his twenties, unemployed after
the closure of his factory and hoping to get work in the docks. In the
meantime, he asks to stay with Mahmut, but his visit is far from a comfortable
one.
Using little overt narrative and even less dialogue, Ceylan patiently
excavates the inner lives of his characters, drawing the viewer in minute
by minute. With a beautiful, minimalist visual style reminiscent of Antonioni,
this is arthouse cinema at its best, while Ceylan himself is an auteur
in the fullest sense. As well as directing Uzak, he produced it for his
own company, wrote, photographed and co-edited it.
Voted the Turkish film of the year, Uzak is also the country’s entry for
the foreign language Oscars.
Demetrios Matheou, London
FF editorials, Oct 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
A marvellously astute examination of a friendship disintegrating
under pressure from time, place and social inequality. A photographer
living in Istanbul -once full of lofty artistic ambitions but now resigned
to an almost cynical pragmatism- agrees to put a cousin from a remote
village he used to call home; unfortunately, his guest, unable to find
work on any of the ships that would take him abroad, begins to outstay
his welcome, and tensions develop. With its laconic, faintly elliptical
narrative style, its subtle but striking compositions, and its superb
performances, the film speaks volumes both about masculinity and about
modern life in the Western(ised) world. Not that the film is all doom
and gloom; a droll wit ensures that the none too upbeat take on friendship
and fulfilment never feels forced or oppressive. Indeed, a delicious sight-gag
involving Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' typifies the blend of warm affection and
wry scepticism that distinguishes the movie.
Geoff Andrew, Time out
(London), Oct 29-Nov 5, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
GUARDIAN : Five films to catch before everyone
else in London Film Festival
Uzak
(Distant) : This
profoundly touching, comic and beautiful film from Turkey is one of the
best films of the new decade. It's not due for a full UK release until
next May, but you can see it now, and my advice is: run don't walk. Mahmut
(Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a well-to-do middle-aged man in Istanbul. He's a
successful, distinguished photographer who has reached the ebb tide of
disillusion in his life and career. Then his young cousin Yusuf (Mehmet
Emin Toprak) turns up, asking to crash at Yusuf's fastidious bachelor
pad while he looks for work as a merchant seaman. The story of this oddest
of odd couples hooks into your heart. It's heartbreakingly sad and yet
often funny.
Peter Bradshaw,
Guardian (England), 10 October 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
After garnering three major awards at this year’s Istanbul
Film Festival, Nuri Bilge Ceylan went on to scoop the Grand Jury prize
in Cannes, testament to the quality and assurance of his contemplative
style of film-making. Ceylan makes art cinema at its most fully realised,
languidly paced and unafraid to let the camera just sit back and observe.
Here he shifts location from the rural environs of his two previous films
(his second, Clouds in May screened here in 2000), moving to modern Istanbul,
rendered as a beautifully desolate snow cloaked city. A young man from
the country arrives at the house of his cousin, an older photographer.
Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) is hoping to find work at the docks and eventually
to board a ship as a sailor. Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozedimer) takes him in,
despite the disruption to his ordered and solitary life. What follows
is an eloquently detailed series of small episodes in which the passive,
uncommunicative young man and his obsessive older relative try to get
along together. Given the sheer visual force of his films, it’s tempting
to think that landscape is what Ceylan does best (and his films do provoke
no end of painterly comparisons). But in Distant, he combines aesthetic
minimalism with an acutely observed study of character, to present a film
of infinite sadness and longing.
Sandra Hebron, London Film
Festival, Oct 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
... The interesting thing is not what the characters
in Distant do but what writer/director/cinematographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan
does to his audience. I've seen half a dozen films since Distant but it's
Ceylan's vision that haunts me. He's one of the most visual storytellers
I've ever seen. The imagery in Distant is stunning. Ceylan uses the snowy,
isolated city of Istanbul to incredibly powerful effect. His characters
are isolated emotionally and physically. And Ceylan's use of auditory
elements is incredibly effective. He doesn't use a score but he creates
one with the sounds of the world around his characters. Every scene has
an element of natural sound from wind chimes on the porch to sheep in
a field to traffic circling around the city. Ceylan combines ingredients
in such a confident manner that he creates a singular haunting vision.
I'll admit I was frustrated by what seemed like a lack of activity. At
first, I just thought it was a series of very pretty pictures. And, even
as I left the theater I was unsure about the film. But, I can't get it
out of my head. And I don't think I'll be able to for a long time.
Brian Tallerico, Underground
Online (Chicago, USA), October 12, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
CHICAGO
READER : Recomended Films at the Chicago Film Festival
DISTANT : Clouds of May,
the second feature of Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, struck some
viewers as belonging to the school of Kiarostami, a mistake they wouldn't
make with his masterful third feature. An industrial photographer in Istanbul
(Muzaffer Ozdemir) who hasn't recovered from his busted marriage finds
himself the reluctant host of a country cousin (Mehmet Emin Toprak) looking
for work. Ceylan uses this slim premise to build a psychologically nuanced
relationship between the men, as an uncomfortable domestic arrangement
leads to irrational spats. The narrative, capped by a brief bad dream
and the capture of a mouse, isn't always legible, but it feeds into a
monumental, luminous visual style like no other. The nonprofessional leads
won top honors at Cannes; shortly afterward Toprak died in an auto accident.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago
Reader, October 10, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
There isn’t much of a story to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s
Cannes darling Distant, which observes the petty differences between a
passive-aggressive photographer and the cousin he opens his apartment
to. The entire film is stitched together from a collection of long shots
that stress the expansive emotional distance between the film’s characters.
This deliberate strategy is borderline strenuous but works for the most
part because it’s also completely uncomplicated. Via this pretense-free
technique, Ceylan invites the audience to take an unadulterated peek at
the little dramas that incite the main character’s obsessive-compulsiveness.
The film’s funniest bit observes Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir) trying to bore
his cousin to bed so he can continue watching porn. If there’s not a whole
lot that happens in the film, that’s more or less the point. Mahmut, once
an aspiring filmmaker with delusions of Tarkovsky, mostly spends his time
moping and watching television. And since Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) can’t
find a job at the docks, he busies himself by stalking a local woman.
Because Mahmut’s large book collection beautifully implies his introspective
spirit, it’s a shame Ceylan often relies on trite metaphors (here, a mouse
and a shooting toy soldier). If all of this doesn’t sound very interesting,
that’s because Ceylan forces us to glean as much as possible about these
men’s lives using the expansiveness of the film’s frame--that and the
actual tidbits of information he actually does afford the audience via
one-way telephone conversations, answering machine messages and Mahmut’s
quickie get-together with his ex-wife. It’s a calculated, albeit fascinating
way to tell a story, and Distant gets (and stays) under the skin.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
(New York), October 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
What's
hot in New York?
Distant : An awesome achievement,
the lyrical and touching film by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan,
whose Clouds of May premiered in the 2001 New Directors/New Films festival
in New York, looks closely at loneliness and bonds difficult to forge.
Often told with subtle humour, it is the story of a big-city photographer
with a rigid but empty life and his rural cousin who has come to Istanbul
looking for work -- hoping for a ship that will take him away from his
troubled country. The older man is also troubled. While he sees the young
man bubbling with enthusiasm, he wonders at his loss of creativity.
The film, narrated with little dialogue, creates the atmosphere of loneliness
in a masterly fashion. The younger man's longing for a woman is vividly
captured in a handful of scenes, especially in a brief bus sequence, in
which he desperately but discreetly seeks some human contact.
Shooting with a tiny, five-man crew, and functioning as the film's director,
writer, cinematographer and co-editor, Ceylan has made a moving film that
flows gracefully.
The two lead actors, Muzaffer Ozdemir and Emin Toprak, shared the best
actor prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; the film itself won the
Grand Jury Prize. The actors' success is amazing considering that they
have acted only in a handful of films. The younger actor Toprak, a friend
of Ceylan, died in a car accident shortly after the film was completed.
Arthur J. Pais, Rediff.com
(New York), September 24, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
DISTANT
DISTANT springs from a familiar template: a young man,
Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak), comes to the big city and stays with Mehmet
(Muzaffer Ozdemir), an older, seemingly more responsible relative. Its
style - full of long takes from a static camera - will be familiar to
viewers of recent Asian art films. However, Ceylan assembles these elements
with a wit and visual acuity all his own. (His best joke is the scene
in which Mehmet watches STALKER with Yusuf, switching to porn after his
cousin goes to bed.) He has a real knack for strikingly bizarre images
- like a capsized boat, covered with snow - and a strong sense of place.
The wintry setting all but dictates his characters’ actions. The title
accurately describes Yusuf and Mehmet’s remote attitudes. At first, it
also describes the film’s style, but Ceylan builds up a real emotional
charge by the end.
Steve Erickson, Earthlink.net
(New York), Oct 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
The 41st New York Film Festival
…
Artistically, the highlight of the festival was Distant, a low-key study
of a disillusioned Istanbul photographer and the country cousin who blags
his way into his nice middle-class apartment. Filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan
had already impressed with his previous film Clouds of May, but he really
struck gold at this year's Cannes, where the film won the Grand Jury Prize
and the award for best actor.
Thessa Mooij , Kamera,
Oct 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Lingua franca : New York Film Festival
…Perhaps the only other film at this year's festival within any distance
of Tsai's achievement was Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant (Uzak). Set in a
frozen Istanbul where a photographer caught in a mid-life crisis finds
himself paid an unexpected visit by his country cousin, Ceylan's film
uses the setup for a brilliant, allegorical encounter between cultures
old and new, as the Third World clashes resoundingly with the West. A
fount of peasant reverences, country bumpkin Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak)
goes hotheaded defending his kin and feels pity for even a newborn mouse
that gets caught in a trap. By contrast, Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir), his
coolly urban, modernized cousin - older, desensitized to the point of
emotional paralysis - leaves calls about his distant, ailing mother unanswered,
while speaking of his ex-wife's abortion in the most casual terms. Throughout,
Ceylan keeps himself attuned to the differences in values and tastes between
the two characters and the worlds they represent: the calculating, cosmopolitan
intellectual who savors Tarkovsky and Bach ("Who's this Bak?"
asks his befuddled cousin of his CD collection) as much as he does American
porn inhabiting a seemingly different planet than his guileless and naïve
village counterpart. Resplendently photographed by Ceylan himself, Distant
is remarkably nuanced in its observation of how everyday details and behavior
reflect character and values, and more darkly funny a film than some reviews
have suggested...
Derek Lam, Camera Stylo,
Oct 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
DISTANT
From Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose Clouds
of May premiered in the 2001 New Directors/New Films festival, Distant
is a subtle and incisive character study of a big city photographer and
his rural cousin who has come to Istanbul looking for work - hopefully
on a ship that will take him away from his troubled country. The older
man's disillusionment - he has been forced to abandon his artistic ambitions
to concentrate on commercial jobs - provides a funny and revealing contrast
to his young visitor's naiveté and enthusiasm. Shooting with a tiny, five-man
crew (he is the film's director, writer, cinematographer and co-editor),
Ceylan captures a profound feeling of disaffection and emptiness without
losing his sense of humor or his emotional engagement with his characters.
The two lead actors, Muzaffer Ozdemir and Emin Toprak, shared the best
actor prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; the film itself won the
Grand Jury Prize.
New York FF, catalog, Oct
2003
.....................................................................................................................................
One
way to Toronto 2003
… At Cannes this year, there was
strong suggestion that Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose serenely melancholic Distant
won that festival’s Grand Jury Prize, was one to watch. Now that Toronto
has afforded us the opportunity to see Distant alongside Ceylan’s two
earlier features, The Small Town and Clouds of May, it becomes clear that
Ceylan’s importance is much more than suggestion...
Scott Foundas, La weekly
(Canada), September 19 - 25, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
EYE
WEEKLY - Our Top 10 in Toronto Film Festival 2003
Distant ****
Smart, observant and sad, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's third film
was the best feature in competition at Cannes this year. Though Elephant
got the Palme d'Or, Distant (Uzak) walked away with the grand jury prize
and acting citations for its two leads, one of whom, Mehmet Emin Toprak,
died in a car accident earlier this year. This tragedy adds another level
of poignance to Ceylan's essentially melancholy but often droll city-mouse/country-mouse
tale about an unhappy photographer (Muzaffer Özdemir) who reluctantly
shares his Constantinople apartment with an unemployed relative (Toprak)
from his hometown. Ceylan's spare, sly style has echoes of Kieslowski,
Tsai Ming-Liang and Aki Kaurismäki, yet feels fresh.
Jason Anderson, eye weekly
(Canada), Sept 4, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Directors’
Spotlight is a Turkish delight
… Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Tarkovsky-esque Distant, winner of the Grand Prix
at this year’s Festival de Cannes, is one of few Turkish films to gain
distribution in the West. A quiet master of observational cinema, Ceylan
also possesses an elegant and highly evocative photographic sensibility.
His impressive and very personal debut feature, The Small Town, which
stars many of his family members, is an exquisitely rendered document
of rural Turkish life. Clouds of May continues this self-reflexive angle,
offering a delicate and charming portrayal of the circumstances that led
to the making of The Small Town.
Distant finds gruff photographer
Mahmut, unsettled by a failed marriage and the departure of his ex-wife
to Canada, playing an increasingly unwilling host to Yusuf, an old chum
from his hometown (played by Mehmet Emin Toprak, who was killed in a car
accident shortly after the film was completed). The film’s emphasis on
the discordant relationship between past and present, hope and reality,
obsession and indifference is encapsulated in the film’s deceptively graceful
and starkly beautiful opening shot. Beginning with the image of a lone
figure departing from a rural village, it shifts to gaze longingly down
a winding road, desolate but promising, leading to a horizon that glows
with an infinitely hopeful translucence – the way sunlight looks with
your eyes closed. Distant abounds with stunning images that evoke a pessimistic
response to an optimistic goal, and conversely, a sense of buoyancy in
the face of despair. Yusuf looking for work in the Istanbul shipyards
and finding only the derelict hulk of a half-sunken freighter. Mahmut
walking his mother towards the light of her imminent death. Mahmut’s ex-wife
sitting alone, disillusioned after a tryst with Mahmut that has brought
neither of them any satisfaction. The characters in Distant encounter
great difficulty in communicating with each other...
Andrew Mcintosh, For Toronto
FF (Canada)
.....................................................................................................................................
Turkish
films deserve a wider audience
... I guess that shouldn't come as a revelation, but we don't see many
Turkish films in the U.S. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan showed Distant, as
well as two earlier films here... Ceylan's movies unfold at a slow pace
that's not for everyone, but he's an amazing director. Watching a Ceylan
film is a bit like watching life revealed before your eyes...
Robert Denerstein, Rocky
Mountain News (Canada), September 13, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant
, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey) ****
Not the prize winner, but probably the most interesting film from this
year's Cannes Film Festival, a study in alienation both subtle and biting.
The film, which is often silent, is about a photographer, Mahmut, who
lives in Istanbul. One day a man from Mahmut's rural village comes to
visit him, hoping to stay long enough to get a job on the ships. While
the days pass, the visitor, unable to get work, continues living in the
house, as Mahmut sinks into a depression at the news that his ex-wife
will soon be moving to Canada with her new husband. One warning: The movie
may prove daunting to those who enjoy action: The major crisis is the
point at which a mouse gets stuck to some glued paper...
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
(Canada), September 12, 2003 (Mini Reviews for Toronto FF)
.....................................................................................................................................
DISTANT
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2003, ****)
--
The back of my mind suspects that fellow Toronto International Film Festival-geeks
Mike D'Angelo and Scott Tobias had some secret bet about what I'd think
of this film, a highly-anticipated multiple prize winner at Cannes. Each
seemed particularly eager, both before and after the film, to convince
me that I'd like DISTANT less than I did (Mike) or more than I did (Scott).
But I'm neither neither fire nor ice, just in the middle ... like lukewarm
water. The basic narrative is an Istanbul version of "The Town Mouse
and the Country Mouse," only here they're cousins Yusuf (country)
and Mahmut (city). I can't fully embrace this film because it's made in
The Official Cinematic High-Art Style Of Contemporary Ennui -- long shots,
little dialogue, static framing, expressionless acting, not much happening
at some points, and even less than that at others. I like some films made
in this style (the works of Tsai Ming-liang, e.g.), but a little of it
really does go a long way with me. In addition, the two lead actors are
basically hangdog schmucks, posing in glum expressions of boredom throughout.
And frankly, I got fairly bored by DISTANT at several points, but every
time I start to say how much that annoyed me, I remind myself (or am reminded
by Scott) of a number of extremely funny sight (and sound) gags that leaven
this hunk of ennui. I won't even allude to them since some are dropped
into the flow of the shot, sometimes so suddenly that that the unexpected
suddenness is part of the joke, like the ad parodies in the ROBOCOP films.
In addition, there's the film's pure cinematic style, which is little
short of breathtaking. Ceylan, a former still photographer, can compose
and layer a static shot like nobody's business. In the particularly fine
opening shot, he divides a natural landscape into three distinct spaces
(while a sliver of action goes on), and then he does a 90-degree pan to
a different, but equally well-segmented landscape. Ceylan also has the
mother of all sound designers, and he uses subtle wind chimes and ambient
noise to in some cases even create action, and at one point even having
a train run over you apparently from behind (I don't recall that effect
used so conspicuously and effectively since the opening chopper whirring
in APOCALYPSE NOW ... see this film in a good theater if you can)...
Victor, For Toronto FF
.....................................................................................................................................
DISTANT
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s stature rose
rapidly with the resounding critical acclaim of his first two features:
the intimate, finely crafted The Small Town and the gracefully self-aware
Clouds of May. Distant confirms the director’s eminence. His control of
cinematic rhythm and eye for delicate detail come to the fore in this
sombre but visually glorious meditation on the distance between two reticent
men.
Where Clouds of May was a film
about filmmaking, Distant explores the crystalline stillness of photography,
the vocation of the middle-aged Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir). Into his professionally
successful but isolated life wanders Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak), Mahmut’s
unemployed cousin from a small country town. Yusuf has imprecise plans
to find a job aboard a ship, believing that contentment lies far away.
Although the younger man tries not to disturb his host’s meticulous habits,
inevitably the cousins impinge upon one another’s privacy. The extent
of Mahmut’s obsessive, philosophical detachment is revealed as he attempts
to ward off the world with ritualistic gestures.
Ceylan’s elegant cinematography
and a melancholy, deeply pensive tone evoke the Russian master Andrei
Tarkovsky, whom Ceylan cites as an influence. A contemplative pace and
sparse dialogue lend the film an atmosphere of crushing loneliness as
it delicately explores the disintegration of social ties and the desperate
self-reliance that is characteristic of city dwellers’ lives.
Ceylan draws exceptional performances
from his lead actors, both of them non-professional, and photographs their
subtle shifts of expression with care. Özdemir executes Mahmut’s routines
with enigmatic precision and Toprak’s Yusuf is a compelling portrait of
frustrated, aimless youth in a depressed economy. Tragically, this young
man, who also appeared in the director’s previous features, was killed
in a car accident shortly after the completion of this film. His untimely
death reflects the tragedy in his character’s deferral of action – an
event that binds fiction to reality in a most bitter, vivid way. Toprak
leaves a powerful legacy with Distant.
Dimitri Eipides, Toronto
FF catalog
.....................................................................................................................................
Distant ****
This Turkish film, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Distant is an excellent
character-driven drama about two cousins who live with one another for
a short time. One is a rich photographer and the other is a poor villager
who comes to Istanbul to find work. The film is both literally and figuratively
about distance, as it deals with personality clashes and the lack of communication
between the two men. Not much happens, but what makes it so engaging is
its masterfully refined cinematography, remarkable use of sound, deliberate
pacing and subtle metaphors. The film is close to the spirit of Andrei
Tarkovsky films, which most definitely makes it not for everyone. I thought
it was great..
Matt Langdon, Filmcritic.com,
After Telluride FF (Colorado, USA), Sept 2, 2003
.....................................................................................................................................
A Window on Asian Cinema
... Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant, recipient
of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year won the Cinefan Best Film
award “for finding the sublime in the ordinary lives of two men; for examining
their human condition challenged by economic crisis and personal frustrations;
and for the deeply felt compassion with which the filmmaker presents the
values of friendship, trust and human aspirations”. Set in blustering
wintry scenic Istambul the film describes the poignant situation of a
young man from a village taking shelter with his successful photographer
cousin while he looks for a job on a ship. As the days stretch into weeks
the man resents the invasion of his privacy. The young man, naïve in the
extreme seeks solace in unsuccessfully chasing young girls. Eventually
the older cousin accuses the boy of stealing a silver fob watch from his
apartment. And even when he discovers he was mistaken does not admit its
recovery. The young man leaves silently and the older man is left to live
with his guilt.
Kavita Nagpal, Asian Affairs,
Sept 2003, after Cinefan (India)
.....................................................................................................................................
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