Mayis Sikintisi

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.

This film will not go down in film history annals as another Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai, but I have no doubt that scattered connoisseurs will still be watching this film long after most big-time Hollywood watermelons meet their deserved oblivion. This is a quiet, unpretentious film that manages, with the sparsest materials, to wind its way into your heart and mind forever. A film director returns to his provincial home town to shoot a film with amateurs (his parents and friends) as the stars. This is therefore a "metafilm," or a film within a film. The director doesn't make a big deal out of this minor post-modern conceit, he doesn't wear his learning on his sleeve--he just uses it as a source of humor and self-deprecation. The pivot of the film is the director's relationship with his father, a stubborn yet gentle idealist who simply wants to keep his modest grove, which he has tended for over fifty years, from being cut down by the land authorities. The ties between parents and children, the forces of encroaching modernity, the paradoxical beauty and desperation of provincial life, and man's ties to nature are all themes the director handles with deft, light touches. The story is reminiscent of Chekhov (to whom the film is dedicated) and the Iranian masters, but at the same time seems very plain and artless. There are, however, deep springs of art behind that seeming artlessness, "unheard melodies" that only time and repeated viewing can fully drag into the consciousness of the average viewer: but they are there, and they soar.

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 has taken the sensitive, beautiful, rich cinematography and directing that he used on Kasaba and has successfully applied these to a more complex and expansive film. This time, there is a plot, a storyline that follows how several of the characters are trying to address certain problems that they face. Specifically, these are Muzzafer's desire to make a film, his father's desire to claim and keep a plot of woodland, and his cousin's desire to leave the small town and move to Istanbul. The plot is not too complex, it is not "exciting," there is no great, complete culmination, yet it is powerful and emotional nonetheless. We follow the characters and their efforts to address the issues in a calm, but beautiful and sensitive manner.

Like Kasaba, this film's strong points are great beauty and showing "real" events and characters in a pure, simple form. The humour, emotion, and drama are subtle, yet the film succeeds in evoking strong emotion and empathy with the characters. There is no overt sadness, anger, happiness, etc., demonstrated strongly in the film, but the viewer can feel these very strongly.

In part, this is due to the film maker's very sensitive, artistic techniques and abilities, but there is more. The actors are on the whole simply wonderful. They succeed so well at being extremely convincing and subtly creating great emotion and richness of character, so that the viewer can easily understand the greater meaning to a small gesture or phrase. As before in Kasaba, I particularly love Emin Ceylan, who plays the father/grandfather, but they are all wonderful, including Muzaffer Ozdemir and Emin Toprak.

While the ending may seem a little inconclusive, it nevertheless provides some resolution or at least new realisations about the three main issues facing characters. Again, this is handled subtly and beautifully.

In the end, this film is visually beautiful and convincingly portrays events and characters simply, without being "done up" and in a manner that evokes great empathy. It thus succeeds beautifully at its apparent goals.

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.