Mayis Sikintisi

Having seen this movie had the same effect on me as I first saw "tree with the wooden clogs" by Ermanno Olmi. It was like being part of a real life (of real people). No imitations, no caricatures, nothing artificial, nothing but the life itself as we all live it. Yes there is love, there are expectations, there are hopes, everything that is part of life is here. It's these art pieces that still give me hope for humanity. They make us see how pure we all are, despite everything imposed on us by commercial approaches in Hollywood cinema.

The dialogs, the acting, the directing all support this pure approach in this film. Human beings are all reflected in this movie without any makeup (in both sense). The director's first full length movie "Kasaba -The Town" was a small masterpiece. Now this movie proves that he can still create masterpieces, even when he enlarges his vision.

Don't expect to find models or playboys in this movie. Nor expect people to hate or harm each other. There is not too much philosophical extravaganza either. No sex, no violence, no big words. So what made this movie to win so many awards in Turkey and elsewhere? "Mayis Sikintisi" (The Anxiety of May) is just about the simple and beautiful flow of daily life. Some commentators called it "a pastoral symphony". It has only a "slight narrative"; the story of the director himself, his own family and how he shot his first feature film "Kasaba" in his own native town. If you like the style of the contemporary Iranian cinema, especially that of Abbas Kirostami and Jaffar Panahi, you will surely like this movie. Watch "Mayis Sikintisi" and you will feel your mind and soul purified!

This has the same actors as Uzak, playing very similar characters. It also has the Ceylan's parents in leading roles - playing a film director's parents. It's fairly self-indulgent - there can be no doubt that Ceylan only knows one thing, and that he is filming it here - but that's precisely the reason to come to Ceylan: to get away from the commercial stuff, to get some glimpses of ordinary people more or less struggling with their lives.

This film has few pretensions, only aiming to show us various people from small-town Turkey, each with their own petty preoccupations. It takes its time, but when it's hot and the sun is dappled by leaves against the wall, why rush? These things are worth capturing for their own sake, because times and places change, people die and disappear - and the world is fascinating despite our weariness. The message is implicit in the very making of the film, which is a record of the making of a film.

This kind of thoughtful, gently sentimental film-making surely owes a lot to Kiarostami and the Iranians. Ceylan is halfway between that and Tarkovsky, just as he is geographically. Clouds of May is not something you need to see - Uzak was a better distillation of what he has to offer in terms of original cinema - but it leaves an impression of things you feel you ought to have more time for, and which are perhaps among the most important things.

The problems the crew face during the shooting is what i have imagined how the process of filming would look like.

This is the first movie that exactly shown this reality and struggles and disappointments of a filmaker in a very true scale

Though there were some scenes where the actors childishly failed to act, and saw the camera istead, it was also convinced me as it was part of the documenting the behaviours of the non artists.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's second feature film, a sequel to Kasaba. It shocked and impressed me in the final act. When I look at it now, it really shows what Ceylan can do in future.