Uzak

"Uzak" was Nuri Bilge Ceylan's third film but it was the one that established him internationally and marked him out as a world class director. It's an astonishingly mature and imaginative picture displaying great visual acuity as well as a deep understanding of human nature. It's about two cousins, Mahmut, a photographer whose wife has left him and Yusuf, who has come to stay with him while looking for a job. At first their relationship is cordial and friendly but gradually Yusuf begins to get on Mahmut's nerves. Ceylan tells his tale with great empathy and a good degree of humour, despite the sadness at the centre and draws wonderful performances from Muzaffer Ozdemir as Mahmut and Emin Toprak as Yusuf. Tragically, Toprak was killed in a car accident just after the film was completed and posthumously shared the best actor prize at Cannes with his co-star. Absolutely essential viewing.

Reading some of the other reviews of this film, i was reminded of both good and not so good aspects of it. But overall, i have to say it is one of the better films i have seen from any number of genres or countries recently. More than anything else, it avoided many of the typical traps of more recent international cinema, like taking nice pictures of landscapes or being 'hip', 'fun' or imitating American films like pulp fiction. The film is unique in many ways. For one thing, it is a film about relationships in which sex plays no role (unusual, especially for foreign films). It is also a film about two men's relationship to each other (also unusual - not a 'buddy film', no homosexual tension, no ego/phallic competition). It uses little dialogue, but communicates a tremendous amount. It is a simple story, yet full of complex details which are easily understood by any human being and universal in their relevance. I did not find the film dark or depressing (everything would seem this way if you watch Hollywood happy ending films all the time), but rather a true reflection of human emotions. For instance, in the scene where Mahmut realizes his cousin is gone is you see both his feeling of relief, that the cousin is gone and yet regret, that he pushed him away. Who has not felt such ambivalence - when losing a friend or lover, or in some other situation? It's rare to get these kinds of real human emotions displayed on film in a non-cliché way. As far as culture is concerned, or this being a Turkish film, i feel it strikes the very difficult balance between being a 'Turkish' film - about realities which more apply to that place (the greater struggle to make it in a Turkish city versus a European one; the greater contrast between country and city), and a universal, human story which didn't necessarily have to be set in Turkey. In this day and age where people around the world are consuming culture and fetishizing it, this film does not try to entice us as 'Turkish', nor does it try to communicate it as a 'harsh reality', or 'that's how Turkey/Istanbul IS'. And yet the cultural elements are there. I think the comparison to 'lost in translation' that somebody made is quite good. Everyone, at least in the US, was raving about that film. I personally thought it was mediocre at best. It was well put by someone as a vague story which supposedly was supposed to deal with 'disorientation' that happens to people living or traveling overseas. Even if the film was supposed to be humorous, the characters and their motivations or crises were never clear (even for a 'lighter' film or comedy, this is necessary). And i found myself being treated to a typically 'orientalist' story of the alienated Amerian overseas. Going back to 'Distant', as for the idea that this is bad acting, or too slow, or has no plot, I'm sorry but people who say this know nothing about film making and maybe nothing about being human, no offense. You do not have to be a film aficionado or cultural connoisseur to appreciate this film. This film will be two hours of your time well spent!

It has taken me about a year now after seeing this film to write about it. Lord knows I have wanted to, after witnessing it I knew I saw something I hadn't seen before but wasn't sure why. Now after reflecting for quite some time I know, it's these characters that even now I still can't stop thinking about.

Distant briefly and slowly tells the story of a relative (Yusuf) who comes from the rurals to live briefly with a well off to do photographer (Mahmut) in the city in hopes to find employment. However it becomes clear that after Yusuf hypothesizes the idea of being a sailor and his employment prospects dim, that he's really searching for something else, some sort of purpose in his life.

Through all this soul searching we are taken through seasonal surroundings that are filmed exquisitely. The context in which they happen makes the scenes more powerful in 2 particular ones when a girl Yusuf has been following suddenly meets up with her significant other, and the look of Yusuf's face as he looks into a basket of fish and the shot and light that reflects off his tortured face. That scene in itself has to be one of the most gorgeously filmed pieces I have witness in I don't know how long.

In the end Mahmut has his own demons too, but ends up confronting his relative that he is not really trying to find a job and is forced to ask him to leave, in a scene that is very simple but has the feeling of true heartbreak.

What the viewer is left with is lots of reflecting and pondering for these 2 people who everyone can see a piece of themselves in. You should not be put off by the pace of this film it is truly worth every single breathtaking second.

Rating 10 out of 10.

It's probably a year since I saw Uzak, but it has left strong memories of the two main characters, jaded photographer Mahmut and his naive cousin from the village Yusuf.

It's a long film with very little dialogue and a quite limited plot. This has evidently annoyed a fair few viewers. But the film constructs such a painfully believable portrait of Mahmut and Yusuf that there's just as much emotional tension as in the paciest thriller.

Just to be clear, there's no padding in this film -- in the long pauses where no one speaks there as much happening in the characters' emotions (and in yours, watching them) as you could bear. Go to see it awake and alert, and you'll be gripped rather than anaesthetised.

Uzak rings true in so many ways, and that sincerity is probably its greatest accomplishment. People don't grapple with events and problems, so much as with each other. In fact, in the whole film, there's probably not one point where the main characters (Mahmut, Yusuf and Mahmut's ex-wife Nazan) are not opposed.

Much of it is true the world over: country cousin Yusuf's perhaps wilfully naive expectation that a job on a ship will drop into his lap; Mahmut's urbanised cynicism and unwillingness to sympathise with Yusuf.

Other truths are more-specific to Turkey: Yusuf's incomprehension that Mahmut might be tolerating his stay with gritted teeth; Yusuf veering between macho ambition and wide-eyed awkwardness when he tries to get to know a woman.

Uzak is undoubtedly a pretty bleak film, and one Ceylan's strengths is not to beat us over the head with the themes he explores. For me at least, I believed entirely in the behaviour of his characters. All the little failed attempts to connect and petty cruelties ring so true. And yet I didn't leave with a message that "The world is like that", but instead I got "This is how we sometimes treat each other."

People must learn to watch what is up there on the screen. This is a great film that is based on a slow, careful gathering of details which serve to establish the personalities of these two men. The passivity of Yusuf (Emin Toprak), the country cousin, is well described by his fear of talking to women. He has at least three chances to start a conversation with a young woman and loses all of them. He has many decades of bachelorhood ahead of him, and maybe unemployment as well.

Mahmut is a different case. He got out of the small town by working very hard (we imagine), and his resentment of slackers like Yusuf is palpable (he leaves crumbs on the expensive carpet--the slob!). We are shown a group of friends talking about Tarkovsky among other things, and we note that Mahmut feels regret--but only slight regret--that his work has become commercial over the years. The gulf between the cousins just gets wider and wider. The mouse trap theme is wonderfully vivid, it brings out the compassion and confusion of Yusuf, and the cold-blooded problem solving of Mahmut.

I was reminded of two classic films of men driving each other nuts: Les cousins by Chabrol (the rich boy with Hitlerian pretensions played by Brialy is always in my mind) and Kiss of the Spider Woman (William Hurt can't figure out why everybody's so mean). Nuri Bilge Ceylan takes his place among the dozen important directors now active. I just hope that in future he will come to rely on collaborators, instead of directing, writing and shooting his films himself.