by Allan Fish
(Turkey 2002 110m) DVD1/2
Aka. Distant
Snow on the Bosphorus
p Nuri Bilge Ceylan d/w Nuri Bilge Ceylan ph Nuri Bilge Ceylan ed Eyhan Ergürsel art Ebru Yapici
Muzaffer Ozdemir (Mahmut), Emin Toprak (Yusuf), Zuhal Gencer Erkaya (Nazan), Nazan Kirilmis (lover), Feridun Koc (janitor), Fatma Ceylan (mother),
It had been twenty years since Yilmaz Güney’s Yol. Two decades in the wilderness for Turkish cinema, at least through the eyes of the west. There were rumours of greatness in the seventies, not just from Güney but from Ertem Egilmez’s Hababam Sinifi, Kartal Tibet’s Tosin Pasa and Zeki Okten’s The Herd. But who could see them now? Out of that western indifference came the reaction to Ceylan’s film at Cannes in 2003. He was a new name, but those in the know recognised his cinema.
It’s winter in Istanbul where we find Mahmut, a solitary, fussy middle-aged man, working as a freelance photographer. Into his world he gets a visitor, Yusuf, his younger cousin, from his old home town, who has come here to find work after the local business that employed over a thousand locals shut down due to a financial recession. He expects to only be there a week, but he ends up staying much longer, much to the chagrin of his host. Reluctantly, however, he agrees to let Yusuf come with him on a work trip, photographing the exteriors and interiors of mosques.
The recognition of Ceylan’s ideology comes from his fascination with and debt toward Andrei Tarkovsky. Not for nothing is his Stalker seen on the TV in Mahmut’s house, and it’s the disparity between their two viewing preferences – could you get more disparate than Tarkovsky and Yusuf’s preferred porn? Not just Tarkosvky provides inspiration, those in the know will spot similarities towards both Paradjanov and Kiarostami and the modern Iranian school.
What Ceylan does expertly is to defy expectations, to make a film very much about Turkey and its place in the 21st century and make it universal. It’s set on the straits of the Bosphorus but it could just as easily be Shanghai, New York or London’s Thames estuary. Yet he takes a place which we seemingly know in our subconscious, the Istanbul towered over by the domes of Justinian’s St Sophia and seen as the gateway from the ancient west to the east, and turns it on its head, all by setting it in such inclement weather. It reminds one in some ways of what a forbidding place Nic Roeg made wintry Venice in Don’t Look Now. There’s something almost surreal about snow in Istanbul. It creates a perfect backdrop for a film about one man’s isolation. Yusuf is come to Istanbul to seek employment on the ships to send money back to his ill mother and impoverished family abut finds that old dream to be avoided. It’s no longer profitable.
We know it cannot end happily, not in the conventional sense, but it ends with a sense of understanding between the two men. The very title says it all – distant – for that’s just what Mahmut is to his old life, and indeed to everything outside his closed little world. His bed is in the living room, and he doesn’t climb under the duvet covers, preferring to lie on top with an opened out sleeping bag over him. He keeps everything at a distance. Beautifully directed and gorgeously shot, it’s a poem of a film, occasionally falling into areas that some may find mundane and tedious, but remaining illuminating from first to last. And what a last shot it is. The sun trying to break through the cloud and smog over the Bosphorus, Mahmut sat on a bench looking out over the water, enough white plastic bags blowing past to bring back memories of American Beauty, and a pack of Yusuf’s cigarettes. In taking one out and lighting it, it’s the nearest Mahmut has been to a connection with his cousin or his family in general. It’s a challenging, stunning tale not without humour, and if not quite a masterpiece to rank alongside the works of his masters, and if his later Climates and Three Monkeys were steps sideways rather than forwards, a masterpiece is in Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This’ll do till then.
I loved this stark & austere Turkish drama that explores the widening chasms between human beings, and the consequent urban loneliness. The stunning visuals made the human story that much more palpable & devastating. Great stuff as usual, Allan.
I’ve started backwards with the Ceylan filmography, having only seen Three Monkeys. That impressed me visually with its very carefully composed austerity, and if Distant is superior I can only look forward to my march into the past.