Sydney Film Festival - Rod Bishop finds some absorbing, impressive film-making - ABOUT DRY GRASSES (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey France Germany 2023)

 Of late, Nuri Bilge Ceylan has stretched the running times of his Chekhovian-influenced Turkish tales. This one is 197 mins, The Wild Pear Tree (2018) is 188 minutes and Winter Sleep (2014) is 196 minutes.

Admirers of his work will instantly recognize the Turkish writer-director’s figures in Anatolian landscapes, this time opening with a shot of Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) trudging through deep snow to the village of Incesu. He is a misanthropic art teacher grimly waiting to complete the last of his four years in this outpost so he can move to Istanbul. 

Samet is irritated by his students and not very encouraging, at one point telling them none will become artists and that most will end up growing potatoes and sugar beets to feed the wealthy.

But he does have a favourite, the 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bağci) with whom he surreptitiously flirts and buys her presents. Sevim writes him a love letter that falls into the hands of one of his faculty colleagues. Scandal awaits.

Samet is also hiding his competitive drive from his teacher-colleague and housemate Kenan (Musab Ekici). Together they visit another teacher Nuray (Merve Dizdar) in a near-by town and Samet jealously watches as Kenan and Nuray’s mutual attraction grows. He decides, at a later date, to court and seduce Nuray. 

 

Sevin (Ece Bagci)

Subsequently, in a painstaking scene of emotional violence, he confesses all to the stricken Kenan. For his part, Kenan does not realize the secretive pleasure Semet is feeling from this conquest, but Ceylan makes damned sure his audience does.

Does this sound like enough plot for a film that is exactly the same length as Doctor Zhivago, the 1965 David Lean epic that managed to deal with the Russian Civil War, the Russian Revolution and the First World War in three hours and sixteen minutes (with an Interval)?

As he has done in the past, Ceylan stretches his plot to fit the running time, methodically teasing, exploring and dissecting his characters. 

In one lengthy exchange between Samet and Nuray, who has lost a leg in a terrorist bombing in Ankara, the political and the personal are chewed over at length – Nuray’s social commitment up against Samet’s misanthropic helplessness. In this exchange Nuray askes Samet what kind of person he is and Samet responds with: “Shall I tell you the truth or try to make you happy?”. Truth, Ceylan is trying to tell us, comes from and is defined by the narrator.

This exchange is followed by a breaking of the 4^th wall, a startling cinematic flourish from Ceylan before he proceeds into his final act and the eventual appearance of the dry grasses. It’s absorbing, impressive filmmaking.