Les climats

We have recently heard about too much about Iklimler. There were mix of comments about the movie and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Half of them were negative, half of them were positive. There must be confusion in evaluating his movies. Then I went to the movie to see by myself.

At first sight Iklimler has absent story. The movie began from uncertain situation and goes on through uncertain path. Writer and director should have been separated with each other in order to give double power to the movie. Nuri Bilge Ceylan can be successful director, but he is not a writer as good as his directing talent.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan wanted to show us how to make a movie with simple story –even no story. The players are ordinary, music's are ordinary, but the movie itself is really artistic. He was focusing to the eyes effectively and eyes showed us emotions powerfully.

Natural voices were used in the movie and this technique should have been very difficult if we take into consideration open field's scenery. The conditions are not totally controllable in this kind of areas. This voice preference shows us Nuri Bilge's self confidence.

We can not criticize players well because they were seen in backgrounds. The movie itself depended on artistic scenes too much, not on players. Even though Nazan Kirilmis and Ebru Ceylan were good enough. Nuri Bilge himself is not talented as his directing skill. Nuri Bilge was known with misery. But after his playing it seems he will lose this misery. Other players were too naive and not suitable for the movie.

Panoramas were excellent. From the beginning Antalya-Kas, goes on with Istanbul-Beyoglu and finally Agri- Ishak Pahsa Palace. The winter season reflected with a hundred percent reality and beauty.

When we look at the overall Nuri Bilge made ego satisfaction in all writing, directing and playing dimensions. In directing dimension it is true that he is probably the best director in Turkey. Other dimensions were not sufficient to make the movie perfect. However, Nuri Bilge Ceylan did well with Iklimler for Turkish Cinema.

The films of Michelangelo Antonioni will either bore you to death or captivate you in the most subtle of ways. I fall into the latter category and am profoundly influenced by his work and the filmic conventions integral to them. It was my discovery of Antonioni's work that led to my discovery of New German Cinema, both of which ultimately shaped the way I watched and interpreted films. Brought up on a steady diet of Hollywood movies, I was conditioned to be a passive viewer, one swept away by movies made solely for entertainment purposes. In many ways I still am that little boy who gets lost in the fantasy world on the silver screen, but as an adult I've learned the films that truly make me feel alive are the ones forcing me to be an active participant in what is being projected before me. In other words, films that challenge me by asking questions in lieu of providing absolutes.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's is an Antonioni disciple and his 2006 film Climates is unmistakably an Antonioni clone. From the story of a couple's dissolving relationship on vacation (one part L'Avventura one part La Notte) right down to the compositions of every shot and the very deliberate pacing, Ceylan wears his influence with pride. Cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki beautifully frames every shot, where the meticulous compositions are allowed to play out in patient long takes. As it is with Antonioni's films, the minimal use of editing allows the viewer to study things they normally wouldn't get a chance to even consider. Things like landscape, diegetic sounds and subtleties expressed by the actors, all take on heightened significance where, ultimately, this minutiae plays a crucial role filling in the blanks predominant throughout the film. In other words, films like Ceylan's and Antonioni's challenge their viewers to think, to read between the lines and to actively search for context, meaning and subtext within every frame of their films.

As much as I love to revisit the thrills of my youth with standard Hollywood fare, nothing bests a filmgoing experience where I'm not only expected to think and feel as an adult, but am forced to act like one. What an interesting world we'd live in if the blockbusters were all films designed for adults.

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Without giving away any detail, from the plot of the movie, I can declare to cinema goers that this film is one to seek and watch. The film is very intelligently directed, and the acting is superb.

Not since 'Gegen Die Wand' has Turkish cinema shown it self capable of delivering such a movie.

The acting is also significant, and the way the lead actors portray the indifference and backdrops in middle-class Turkish society is subliminal.

I recommend this movie to anyone who has a keen appetite for European/Turkish cinema.

Bravo.

I just saw the film here in Chicago as part of the city's International Film Fest, and I have a few feelings left hanging around. True, Ceylan's films tend to be slow and he often leaves his character's unsatisfyingly shallow (see "Uzak," an even slower film than this one). But what leaves me intrigued is just this - the fact that he doesn't develop his characters. In "Climates," there are many close up shots which linger, leaving the characters suspended on the screen to be themselves, and these script-less glimpses of them speak volumes to me actually. So yes, in terms of how much is GIVEN to us as an audience, the characters are wanting. But in terms of how much we can construct in our minds, I feel the sky's the limit. I also found the generational difference between Bahar, the young wife, and the other few characters we're introduced to to be quite heavy. For while the other few people we see are all disillusioned by life and lazily struggle with it in the safe realms of their relative bourgeois lives, she seems to be the only one who sees something wrong with the whole picture. The catch is that while she sees through it, she also feels disillusioned by how wrong all the wrongs are, and so she keeps it to herself and simply starts crying. Interspersed throughout the film are subtle focuses on tiny details, like a bee, or snow flakes, which really highlight a rather poetic quality to the film. Overall I found the film to be falsely shallow. Audiences with short attention spans be warned!

A director-as an artist-may choose to tell his story by using different parameters i.e.eloquent treatment of dialogue,scenery,costumes,soundtrack and sometimes visual effects. Another may yet choose to tell his/her story using spare plot,minimal dialogue,long still shoots and creative atmosphere.

Three-time Cannes winner director,actor,photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan follows the second path...

*Spoiler*

A sequel to Uzak,Iklimler,very simply is about a middle-aged academic still writing his thesis and his younger wife(director himself and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan)who pass through the seasons in their marriage.As the story moves on-from summer to fall then to winter-we see the scenery and locations change in parallel with their inner conflicts.The couple cannot reconcile; separation and break-up is unavoidable at the end.

*Spoiler

Ceylan,with almost a Tarkovskian approach tells his story in the manner of a true auteur he is.