About Dry Grasses [2023]

 Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s smouldering new epic About Dry Grasses was, at once, expansive and focused. On one hand, its grand vistas, runtime of nearly 3 ½ hours, and a slow-burn narrative with a temporal arc of few months imbued it with the touches of a Dostoevskian novel that gradually unravels, thus allowing unhurried evocations of a brooding atmosphere and undercurrents; on the other, with just four key characters, remote Anatolian outpost setting, and fiercely tense and ominous crux, it had the air of a moody and mysterious Chekhovian tale. Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), the film’s rivetingly etched protagonist – an art teacher at a primary school who loves photography and is craving to relocate to Istanbul – is a quintessential protagonist in the Turkish maestro’s oeuvre in how he’s a bitter, petulant, complicated, misfit, borderline misanthrope with an artistic bent. Two intersecting strands define his last few months in this village that he deplores, even while capturing its harsh beauty and weather-beaten residents, which are demonstrated via stunning tableaux vivant. He has developed a close bond with fourteen-year-old female student Sevim (Ece Bağcı) – Ceylan avoids interpreting the relationship beyond what we see – that leads to charges of inappropriate behaviour being levelled against him. Meanwhile, he befriends Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a captivating art teacher at another school and Marxist activist who lost a leg in a bomb attack, who he becomes infatuated with when she starts getting close to his colleague and roommate Kenan (Musab Ekici). This magnificently shot and brilliantly enacted film – simmering with weariness and desolation – comprised of striking verbal encounters and a bravura single-take sequence where Sevim makes a temporary Brechtian detour from the movie frame into the adjoining sets.

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: Turkish

Country: Turkey

Winter Sleep [2014]

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Chekhovian tour de force Winter Sleep is an absorbing masterwork that slowly but inevitably draws one in, with its deft interplays between deeply human characterizations, simmering marital dysfunction and quietly lacerating class commentaries. Its sprawling runtime of over 3 hours might appear formidable, but the rich tapestry that it paints through its conversational narrative and leisurely pacing, complemented by its harshly beautiful backdrop – rugged, ravishing landscapes have always formed dominant aspects in Ceylan’s films (Uzak, Climates, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, The Wild Pear Tree) – arrests one psychologically, viscerally and visually. The film’s central protagonist Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) – former stage actor, wealthy proprietor of a stunning boutique hotel in Anatolia, owner of land and properties across the region, contributor of mildly pedantic articles to a local newspaper, and working towards composing a definitive book on Turkish theatre – is a person of compelling contradictions; while he seems a benevolent, gentle-natured, rational, reasonable, sociable and even-tempered man, he considers himself at a higher intellectual and moral ground than those around him, and thereby patronizes and is even contemptuous of those he considers beneath him; and, he’s also pompous, quietly arrogant and is filled with self-deluding class prejudice. Through a series of engrossing interactions, captured through a string of terrific performances, Ceylan portrayed the interpersonal and broader social dynamics – his abrasive, barely sustained marriage to his stunning, much younger wife (Melisa Sözen) who’s come to deride him for her devastating loss of personal sense; his seemingly placid but volatile relationship with his divorced sister (Demet Akbağ); the troubling relationships with two of his tenants whose financial difficulties he’s glibly oblivious of; and his callous bossism over his exasperated chauffeur.

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Marriage Drama/Family Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey

The Wild Pear Tree [2018]

Turkish maestro Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s magnificent The Wild Pear Tree is filled with intriguing contradictions – deep intimacy that belied its epic 3-hour length, a discursive and rambling narrative that was also curiously engrossing, and seamless interplay between seriousnes and wry, brittle humour. Sinan (Aydın Doğu Demirkol), an aspiring writer who’s just finished college, returns to his hometown Çan where he hopes to publish his “quirky auto-fiction meta novel” that he’s completed. As he drifts in a state of suspension, he engages in a diverse mix of meandering conversations – with his father (Murat Cemcir), a kindly man and ageing teacher addicted to gambling; his mother (Bennu Yıldırımlar) who alternates between her weary and caring sides; the town mayor who he approaches to help publish his novel; a greasy “patron of arts” who prefers books trumpeting the town’s historical angles instead of a low-key chronicle of its people’s mundane existence; a couple of demogagues with their interpretations of religion, etc. His interactions with his misunderstood father, with whom he finds himself at odds, and his embittered mother, formed the film’s most powerful crux. And, while every conversation added enriching layers to the film’s thematic excursions and Sinai’s complex nature – which alternated between sober, melancholic, cynical, passive-aggressive, arrogant and even vitrolic – two stood out in their brilliance and seething volatility – with a striking former flame who craves for freedom from the rut around her, and a well-known writer with whom the conversation powerfully imploded from besumed banter to an increasingly lacerating, provocative and confrontational argument. Stunning overhead and panoramic landscape shots, and mininalist usage of a gently elegiac score, deftly laced the film’s quietly afecting undercurrents of disillusionment and reconciliation.

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Family Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia [2011]

Acclaimed Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest offering might seem a murder mystery as per its premise, but upon watching it I realized it’s anything but one. Though presented in the garb of a meticulous police procedural, this is, in essence, a meditation on the dichotomies of human nature, a commentary on the socio-political milieu of the Turkish society, and a wonderfully captured odyssey that is as much physical as it is psychological. Based within a span of a day, the movie starts off with a handcuff-bound criminal, who has already confessed to a murder, being taken around by the cops through the Turkish wilderness in order to locate the place where the dead man’s body has been buried. Soon enough we are introduced to the three world-weary principal characters of the storyline whose innermost psyches and carefully wrapped dark impulses have been finely delineated – a police detective (Yilmaz Erdogan), a public prosecutor (Taner Birsel), and a doctor (Muhammet Uzuner). The film is deliberately paced and is extremely verbose in nature; consequently, one might find it to be a challenging watch. However, if one manages to glean through the seemingly irrelevant conversations, one would find this to be a surprisingly perceptive, darkly comic and brilliantly enacted film for the way the director has subtly managed to capture the various layers and mindsets of the characters. Ceylan’s love for breathtaking outdoor shots would be well known to anyone who has seen his earlier movies like Uzak, Climates, etc., and that trend has continued here too, as we are presented with such extremely well-framed compositions that have made it a visual treat.








Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Police Procedural/Road Movie
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey

Climates (Iklimler) [2006]

Climates, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, darling of the festival circuit and maker of the brilliant Uzak, is another stark and austere drama on man’s inherent need and failure to connect. Set in an increasingly detached and distant Turkish diaspora, Climates is about the breakdown of a seemingly happy relationship where the resultant turbulence felt by the concerned couple is more inward than outward. A university professor and his much younger girlfriend who works for a TV channel (played, in a brave casting decision, by the director and his real-life wife) who, while on a vacation after a long time, realize that they have drifted too apart emotionally to remain happy together. However, despite rekindling a raw physical affair with an old flame, the laconic guy realizes that he is now lonelier than ever before, and thus makes one last attempt to bridge the huge chasm that has developed between him and his former fiancé. The narrative is slow, and long moments of silence rather than words define most of the proceedings – thus making this a difficult watch for most. Contrarily, if one is willing to put in some effort and allow the movie to reveal its various layers and subtleties, he will not regret watching this intense and beautifully photographed human drama.








Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey

Uzak (Distant) [2002]

Directed by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Uzak is an astounding piece of arthouse cinema that has the ability to keep its viewers in a state of daze long after the end credits have rolled. The basic premise is ridiculously simple – the heavily structured life of a freelance photographer residing in Istanbul, Yusuf, gets thrown off balance upon the arrival of his rustic cousin, Mahmut, in search of employment at the docks at the roll of an economic downturn in Turkey. What the premise fails to reveal is that this is a devastatingly affecting look into the severe loneliness of the two protagonists and their futile attempts at trying to make human contact, be it with his divorced wife, in Yusuf’s case, or with the aloof Yusuf and a young girl who has caught his eyes, in the genial Mahmut’s case. The interactions between the two taciturn characters have been brought forth through subtle, carefully placed observations. The tale of the two jaded and detached characters, the languorous pacing of the narrative, and the long moments of silence and inaction, might be off-putting for some viewers; I, on the contrary, was left speechless by the existential script, the powerful statement on the complexities surrounding otherwise banal existences, the underlying pathos that peeks out only once in a while amid the dry humour, and the incredibly naturalistic performances by the two actors. And the ravishingly beautiful images of the cold, icy and desolate landscapes form the most ironic metaphor for the equally bleak, albeit splendid, human story that unfolds before it.








Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey

The Edge of Heaven [2007]

Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a morally and psychologically complex tale on human nature – the inherent fallibility in human character, and his futile attempts at reconciling with his life and love. Given that Akin is of Turkish origin, but was born and brought up in Germany, political and cultural diasporas of both the countries form the perfect setting for the rich, temporally fractured tale of three sets of unconnected parent-child pairs brought together through subtle interventions of ‘fate’ – a short-tempered hard-drinking Turkish immigrant and his quiet, educated professor-son; a prostitute living on the streets of Hamburg and her anarchist daughter who’s part of a radical political outfit in Turkey; and, a disapproving German lady and her rebellious daughter. Coincidence plays a strong role as the six fiercely independent yet lonely individuals (incidentally or accidentally) embark a tragic collision course through the vicious cycle of love, loss and their various repercussions. Continuing on the theme of death and bereavement, the emotionally charged movie is gritty like Head-On (though certainly not as much), with an elegiac tone that is deeply affecting. The acting, it ought to be mentioned, is very good without ever being flashy or spectacular.








Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Turkish/German
Country: Turkey/Germany

Head-On (Gegen die Wand) [2004]

The epithets that might closely define Fatih Akin’s Head-On are, in my opinion, grimy, brooding and bare-assed. Akin completely stripped off any sugar-coatings while displaying human frailties and loneliness at their rawest and most naked – both literally and otherwise. The movie concerns the unlikely emotional connect that develops between two severely self-destructive Turkish immigrants residing in Germany – Cahit, an angst-ridden, hard-drinking 40-something widower living in a state of perpetual disarray, and Sibel, a suicidal young girl whose free, rebellious spirit is at complete odds with her restrictive and conservative family – both roles passionately and fearlessly performed. Despite its content of intense emotions, the movie never plays out as either sentimental or exploitative; rather, it is disturbing, downbeat, provocative and unabashedly erotic. In fact, by using a Turkish folk-song as a motif and to loosely divide the movie into various chapters, it seemed to me structurally quite similar to Lars von Triar’s devastating masterpiece Breaking the Waves. And by mixing punk and grunge rock tracks with exotic Turkish numbers in the score, Akin has managed to be unflinchingly brutal yet surprisingly humane in nearly every frame of the movie.








Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Romance
Language: German/Turkish
Country: Germany/Turkey