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Be
there when 'Distant' is ready for its close-up
Chris Hewitt, St. Paul Pioneer Press (USA), May 7,
2004
The key line of dialogue in the
Turkish "Distant" is this one: "I was somewhat distant
to you because of my emotions."
All of the characters in "Distant" are distant from each other,
and it is because of their inability to connect to their own emotions.
They are all winning the battle to protect their loneliness — a man with
a perfunctory relationship to his mother, two roommates who draw an invisible
but rigid line to separate them, a photographer whose only involvement
with the world is through his lens — but what is it these people win?
"Distant," showing at the University of Minnesota Film Society,
is the sort of movie you develop theories about. If you watch it with
a friend, you'll probably have competing theories and, probably, both
of them will be right.
It's also a film that won't work on video, where you could fast-forward
through some of its more static images. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan holds
those images for a reason. There are mysteries to be explored in his compositions:
Why are so many people so far from the camera? Why is that floor creaking?
Where did that bright red basket, suddenly lowered onto a dingy street,
come from?
Indelible images like that basket (and another of an immense ship, seemingly
marooned in a park) reflect the way the relationships in the film change.
Ceylan doesn't spell out what's happening; he doesn't tell us why his
characters are lonely. He doesn't know. But in his final shot, he does
underscore the value of coming together. It begins — no surprise — at
a distance, and then moves in for a striking close-up.
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