★★★★★
I’m scared by Ceylan. I’m scared because I think he understands me, culturally at least, better than I understand myself. For a while I did just think this was a cultural thing, Ceylan’s ability to dissect Turkey and the Turkish people just astounds me, but having sat on Kuru Otlar Üstüne for a couple hours, I’m beginning to think that somehow he understands a lot more than that.
That’s a very egotistical way of reading a film, I know, taking an artists intentions and twisting them to match my own narrative- but I feel like, personally, once a work of art is put out into the world the artist doesn’t particularly matter anymore. Context can matter, but the artists intentions and influences don’t. It can be read any sort of ways, misunderstood being my main point here. Once a work of art is misunderstood on a large scale, the artist is obsolete. But who’s to say what “misunderstood” really is, surely it’s an artists duty to make sure that they consider the consequences of their works before putting them out. What I guess I’m trying to say is that, an artists intentions are not an objective truth. Maybe that’s a lazy way to look at art, an easy way so no matter what I’m not wrong- and obviously there’ll be hypocritical moments when I turn back on my own beliefs and try to sound objective, but if I was to ever be an artist (who’s work was actually widespread) I think I’d much rather hear what someone personally felt through my work than what they thought I felt through my work. Really gone off track here… back to the film.
What I think I find most impressive about Ceylan is how he utilises the long take and how he uses that to maximise the form. The mere idea of doing a long take requires a lot of choreography, actually doing it even more so, and doing it over and over and over again to piece together a glacial epic is… it’s really something. You can really tell that every single frame is thought through to the nth degree, every bit of mise-en-scene, and especially the blocking, are so immensely detailed that any sort of analysis couldn’t suffice. Blocking is almost a forgotten art form, now with digital cameras we seem to have endless coverage - laziness strikes again, but Ceylan hasn’t forgotten, thankfully. The way he contrasts and lights certain characters as they stand by one another, any scene that takes place in Samet and Kenan’s house comes to mind, instantly gives way to endlessly clashing dynamics that arise subtly throughout. Samet and Kenan’s house has this cracked wall (outlets and knick knacks scattered all around, if you’ve ever seen a village home in Turkey - just picture that) illuminated by a warm yellow light, there’s these curtains by the side and the audience knows what’s outside. An unforgiving whiteness. Snow. The colours within the frame create a smooth contrast, but the information that Ceylan previously gave the viewer also feeds into the frame without actually being in it, which is how information generally works yes but the way it’s done here is less of an afterthought and more of a constant sense of foreboding. The blocking also comes into play with the focus, which a lot of modern directors overdo and use as an excuse to easily direct the audience. The focus in this film completely shifts the viewers place in the story, it switches from one character to another and prioritises their emotions, the other characters become blurred- they’re unimportant to who’s now centre stage. There’s this one shot of Samet in his office, the janitor comes in, Samet is occupied with something, they have a conversation but the janitor never, not once comes into focus- he is completely unimportant to Samet- then Sevim comes into the room and lo and behold, the focus shifts. There’s also certain moments when the focus seems to strobe, this happens in moments of fragility and derealisation (there’s one scene in this picture man, it’s really somethin I tell ya), and it creates this really interesting effect that brings you into reality but doesn’t take you out of the film.
The cinematography is stunning, the framing is perfection, the colours to die for. All I have is praise. There are words to describe the cinematography, but they’re all synonyms or exaggerations of good, so I’ll just leave it at that. I can’t leave it at that. What do I say. Jeez. I do really think that Kuru Otlar Üstüne has some of the most insightful cinematography I’ve ever seen. It’s deeply introspective into the characters and the atmosphere, it erects emotions without bombarding you, it’s all very grand but simultaneously subtle in its presentation.
Speaking of that nice little oxymoron, the sound design really caught my… ear? It’s not a loud story by any means, a couple people shout maybe once or twice but as a whole it’s all very subdued. Maybe it was just the speakers, but every small sound plays into this chaotically blaring symphony of noise. It’s exceptionally unique.
Going back to the long takes, I would really (against the general consensus) not consider calling this a slow film. The takes are long, not slow. It’s paced to perfection, everything rhythmically passes through you and time is nothing. The editing ignores time, even if it sometimes plays out in real time or does the exact opposite and skips a while, time is wholly unimportant. There’s two “montages” in the film, they must both take up about 6-7 shots, every shot is of something completely different and unrelated, but the background gets more singular. The clouds more apparent, the light more bright, the loneliness emphasised.
This isn’t a plot spoiler or anything but if you’d like to go in totally blind to the specifics of the technicals then maybe skip the rest of this paragraph. There’s these edits in the film, whenever someone takes a picture it cuts to that picture. But for almost all of them, scratch one(?), it shows others too. Other pictures of the same vein, businessmen, countrymen, workers, children, animals. Pictures of Turkey, of the Turkish people. The actual Turkish people. Separated.
Thematically, it’s extremely dense, a text that could be studied endlessly. A mood piece about selfishness would be the simplest way to put it I guess. It’s about how we let the past define us (more so how we must let the past define us), about perspective, individuality, youth, loss in a much less physical sense - loss of self to be blunt, it’s about trust; the trust we have for others, for ourselves, the trust we put into the world, the trust that we must put into the world and, the trust the world puts into us. But above all this, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the constant idea of the generational and cultural divide that is deeply ingrained into the soul of Turkey. There’s this generational bitterness, a jealousy, my country (which I’m not even sure I can call mine anymore) is simultaneously adapting to modernity and moving backwards (towards empires and social monarchies), because of the radical ideologies that have driven this nation into its current state. There’s even a shot of a school grade statue of Atatürk lit only by a flashlight and enveloped by darkness. “Youth is wasted on the young” one character mutters, an old man no less. The story in and of itself addresses this generational divide, a teacher (an older figure) accused of having inappropriate contact with a student (a child), the protagonists grooming is shown early on, once challenged it becomes violent (again, not physically) and by the end you don’t know where anybody stands anymore. Samet is not an idol, he says it himself that he’s not a hero- and yet, in this small village of clearly pure hearted (the girl with the boots) and dreamy (“why can’t we draw the sea”) children - he is their teacher. A cynical, self serving, pretentious asshole. He is the modern Turkish liberal, his culturally violent masculinity driven and hidden so deep into his deserted soul that it seeps out in malevolently subtle ways (coming back to the metaphysical). Ceylan’s portrayals of Turkey are accurate, melodramatic for the sake of being cinematic sure, but at its base- what you see is what we’ve got.
I guess you could call it a nihilistic film, in the sense that justice isn’t particularly served (not in the traditional sense, at least) but it’s hopelessness is approached with this dramatic irony, the pretensions of the ego driven protagonists are oblivious to them, they are questioned sure, but when given a choice, Ceylan opts for ignorance. Love becomes this primally abstract idea, inexplicable and crude and in that same path somewhat demeaning, unrealistic almost. Love only exists to fulfil your ego. Sort of like… you need viagra yknow.
What stuck out to me again was that, the dialogue is not seriously ever “prosey” or deeply blatantly philosophical. When it is, there’s an irony to it, a wink, most of the depth comes from the humanity of the way the characters talk and react to one another. The anecdotes are clearly allegorical but not so obviously that they become annoying. In other words, it doesn’t feed you philosophy on a silver platter, you have to go looking.
Composed to utter perfection really, a culmination of everything before, the Turkishest of Turkishes and it even manages to work beyond that and speak about (class) culture on a larger scale too, the setting being a village should’ve given that one away. Ceylan’s sprawling, sombre portrait is one for the ages, probably the best of the year (definitely the best of the year) and maybe even the best of the last couple years combined. I don’t even remember the last time I had this much (and counting!) to say about a film. I’m biased I think, a film about horrible people in a horrible country- it’s bound to be human.
To quote a quoting:
“I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me”.
Comments