A Árvore dos Frutos Selvagens

Watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film 'Ahlat Agaci' ('The Wild Pear Tree') is a cinematic experience that I would compare to reading some of the books of the classics of Russian literature. It's not easy reading, but it's catchy. The length of the books or of the movie exceeds the average, but as a viewer you do not feel the passage of time, because the writers or the film director in this case absorb you in their worlds. As in Chekhov, the characters of Ceylan's film live in a provincial city and the adjoining village, in a socially suffocating atmosphere and are surrounded by a human landscape composed of people unable to understand their intellectual aspirations. The Russian books (Tolstoy's for example) and Ceylan's films contain philosophical or historical diversions that give them an universal and perennial content that crosses the boundaries of geography and time.

Sinan Karasu is a young man who returns to his city and to his non-functional family after graduating college. The prospects of a college graduate are not too many or too attractive: either to take a teacher's exam after which he will be assigned to teach at a primary school in a remote area of Turkey, or join the army or the police. His father, Idris, is a teacher, but also a betting addict, which got him into debts, and led the family to losing the property of their house and living at the edge of a precarious existence. Idris's ambition seems to be to return to his native village, where in weekends he digs a fountain on a hillside, with little hope of ever hitting water. Young Sinan is also a writer, he wrote a book inspired by the local people and culture, but the kind of non-commercial book that finds neither editor nor reader public. The gaps between his aspirations and realities, between his ambitions and the mediocrity around are huge, and the result is a permanent conflict with a world with which he tries to entertain dialogues, but which he also approaches with a sense of intellectual superiority without foundation in social realities.

Like many other good movies (or books or other works of art), 'Ahlat Agaci' can be viewed and understood at several levels. At the personal level, the film has complex characters that we discover and we get to know better and better as we advance in the viewing, with the help the excellent acting performances of actors such as Dogu Demirkol, Murat Cemcir and Bennu Yildirimlar . There is also a political and social layer that is never explicit, maybe in order to allow the film to be easily distributed in Turkey and thus be accessible to the local audience, which is probably very important for a director like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, but also because true creators know how to convey messages without transforming their works into manifestos. Finally, there is a philosophical layer, more or less related to the main story, but which raises interesting issues such as the compromises that a writer is bound to make to gain popularity and what are their limits, or the relationship between religion and its institutions and their relevance in social life. Ceylan knows to tell a story and to film beautifully, and attentive viewers will also benefit from short moments of surreal insertions that deserve not to be missed. The film is long but in rare moments it feels so (the scene of the conversation with the two imams is the only one in which I had the impression that the cutting of a few minutes would have been beneficial), and the spectators will be rewarded at the end with one of the most exciting film finales which I have seen lately. A movie to see.

Is it possible to feel the same things with somebody struggling to build his own life, the difficulties he faces to be free from his parents' expectations or oppressions, to realize that they are not his supporters but his obstacles?.maybe a part of it, yes the duration of the film may be longer than the standards (who determines them?) at the end i felt that every scene was necessary to get closer to Sinan's feelings. Asuman who watches a Yilmaz Guney's film, the mother slapping his son's face scene in that film, maybe inspired her to make "why you didn't get the money from him" conversation with her own son or the imams and Sinan's debate about faith, the famous writer's and Sinan dialogue then conflict..even the scene about the tight budget of the lottery salesman maybe reminded Sinan his father's situation. I feel very lucky to watch this film in its original language and I'm still digesting it but as soon as the film ended, i felt like Idris, Asuman, Sinan and all other people around him are still living there, in that town Çan!

The Wild Pear Tree is Nuri Ceylan's most recent long, compelling character study of a newly graduated student struggling to publish his supposedly unique book about life living in Canakkale. The movie can be said to be the sum of Sinan's interactions with various people throughout the film, including his father who has a gambling addiction, his mother and sister who don't seem overly supportive of him, his apparent love interest, various publishers, religious imams and public figures, and of course other famous writers. The move is very dialogue driven, but it is also not at the same time, given its long runtime, there are also many scenes of simple quietness, and mere great cinematography. However, at times, it feels as though Ceylan has dragged it too far. He appears to have gotten too comfortable in the Director's seat and it feels as though some dialogue scenes and some scenes showcasing amazing cinematography are too long. The plot, or at least the main background story following the move along, also does not feel as compelling as his previous film Winter Sleep. Overall, the movie is great, but also tends to drag a bit. In his previous film Winter Sleep, I think Ceylan got the balance right for achieving the classification 'masterpiece.' However, in the Wild Pear Tree, it is merely a good movie with its flaws, and the main flaw anyone will feel coming out of the film is some of the unnecessary runtime.

The main character has a very rich and interesting personality, as well as the other characters that surround him. The cinematography is amazing as usual but some of the weird things that happen during the moving shots make them far less impressive than the glorious still shots.

It's very easy to find things from your own life within the story and the dialogues that occur which makes a lot of the little-longer-than-usual scenes very engaging and that makes you wonder how the dialogue is gonna develop and conclude.

I normally don't care too much about the length of movies but I'm a little bit on the negative side with this one. That's mainly because of what I told myself halfway through the movie which was; "Ohhh, we're only halfway" instead of "Yeahhh, we're only halfway".

It's about a young writer who recently finished university. He must move back to his village from the city where he went to school. So his struggles start as he doesn't want to get used to the village life.

Turkish master filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan's follow-up to his superb WINTER SLEEP is another intimate epic. Again, over 3 hours long, but, focused on a writer, Sinan. The writer here is a young college graduate determined to not only publish his first novel, but, also to break free from his father, Idris - a teacher who also had wild ambition, but, never succeeded. While the story is simple, Ceylan plunges at length into his characters. A couple of sequences truly stand out: First, is an accidental meeting with a young woman the writer once had his eye one, but, who is now headed, unenthusiastically, into a marriage. The scene plays out in 'real time'. Long past the point where a conventional movie would have moved on. At first it draws the viewer in, and, later, makes one feel almost uncomfortable. As if intruding on a private moment. Even more awkward is a long sequence where Sinan meets a successful local author. They engage. Then spar. Then quarrel. All of the audaciousness and frustrations of Sinan play out over the extended scenes. Despite the tight nature of the plot, Ceylan isn't a 'drawing room' type of filmmaker. He uses the vast Turkish landscape as a means of showing how small a man can be against such a harsh environment. As I noted: an intimate epic. In the end, WILD PEAR TREE doesn't work as well as a WINTER SLEEP, or his masterwork, ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA. The central character isn't quite interesting enough to carry the length of the movie. And, the relationship arc with the father is rather easy to discern long before the half-way point. PEAR isn't a movie for the casual filmgoer. But, it is one to savor should one want to plunge themselves into this world - like diving into a densely detailed novel.