Il piacere e l'amore

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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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.

Ceylan's previous feature, Distant, won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; its glowing reception cemented his status as a major contemporary auteur. In Climates, Ceylan takes us to stunning locations all across Turkey in what may be his most personal film to date - in addition to directing and starring, he also wrote and edited. Filmed with his signature contemplative style, it is a highly subdued, deliberately-paced work that conveys more through silence than through exposition. The cinematography by Gökhan Tiryaki achieves a new high for high-definition video with its refined, poetic images, while Ceylan's precise, beautiful compositions give the film a characteristically elegiac tone. This achingly poignant film subtly captures the emotional tremors that ripple through a fallow relationship.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's enigmatically titled film, 'Climates', is quiet, stark, intimate and in places, quite beautifully shot. The story of the breakdown of a relationship, it depicts lives characterised by selfishness, emotional reticence and harshly physical sexual encounters. In spite of these strengths, the film also has weaknesses: the central character, played by the director himself, seems utterly undeserving of our sympathy (beyond the fact of his inner loneliness); and it's always hard to make a film about emotional emptiness without the film itself feeling, in places, slow and empty. This is particularly true of the film's opening, which makes no concessions to the fact that the audience doesn't yet know the characters well enough to be sufficiently interested in the painful detail of their lives. But the end, it has grown to present a certain emotional power of its own. It's always rewarding to see something other than a Hollywood version of the nature of human interaction; but at times, the film wanders, lost like its protagonists.

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.