A Árvore dos Frutos Selvagens

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.

I felt every minute of this very long Turkish film.

Long because it's, well, long (clocking in at just over three hours). But also long because the main character, who's in virtually every frame of the movie, is such an unpleasant person to hang out with. And part of the reason that he's so unpleasant is that he's recognizable, as I've been that person myself. He's young, fresh out of college, and thinks he knows everything there is to know about life despite having almost no experience of it himself. He's cocky, condescending, and unbearable. What ultimately makes him worth spending time with, and for that matter makes the whole movie worth sticking with, is the final scene, in which he comes to understand that the father who he's shunned because of all the life mistakes he's so determined not to make himself is perhaps the one person in his life who most understands him and most emulates the ideals the son goes around shoving down everyone's throat.

This is the kind of movie I wish I had seen with someone else so I could have someone to talk about it with. Throughout the film, the protagonist has little moments of.....I'm not sure what to call them.....daydreams? hallucinations? A scene will play out one way, and the it will abruptly shift gears and play out another, leading us to believe that the first version was in the protagonist's head. I'm not sure what to make of these breaks from reality. He's written a book that he's trying to get published, so maybe these episodes are a glimpse into how events play out in his book rather than how they did in reality? Or maybe it's the reverse. Maybe the movie we're watching is the book he wrote, and these moments are what actually happened. Or maybe it's neither and I'm overthinking. Maybe he's just a writer who is always attuned to alternative paths a person's narrative might take.

The ending didn't exactly make me feel like all of the three hours preceding it were necessarily worth it. I don't know why the movie had to be quite so long. But it did linger in my head and it's made the whole movie grow in stature for me when I think back on it. I don't know that I'd want to watch it again, but I'm glad I watched it once.

Grade: A

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 wind rises as Sinan and Hatice kiss at a spring on the outskirts of the forest. It is the threshold of many things, not merely the forest. A few steps in the right direction will lead to love and the fulfillment of dreams. The wrong steps invite heartbreak and the crushing weight of societal expectations. Which way to go?! While Sinan inspires Hatice to let her hair down, a big step in Turkey, he can't seem to help himself. The gambling addiction, fawning desire to please and wild schemes of his father are not where Sinan wants to go, yet understanding his father is the key to understanding himself, for better or worse. Wild pears are isolated misfits, and so are father and son.

This witty and beautiful film is full of metaphors, wonderful imagery and deep, intriguing conversations. The film revolves around many interesting themes. Among these themes is that ruptures in the soul should be treated with joy and patience for they help us discover who we are. The cinematography is luminous, mesmerizing and far ranging from lamp lit streets at night, rainfall and close-ups of Hatice's flowing hair. I want to linger in each place. It is a long film, but for what it reveals about contemporary Turkish society and human nature, it is a fantastic bargain and worth the price. From the director of Winter Sleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Seen at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

It has been 21 years since Ceylan shot his first feature film Kasaba, whose main theme was an intellectual young man's desperate, family-stuck life in the countryside with no way out. After this film throughout his film career he focused on different themes as well of course, from middle class criticism (Climates) to film noir (Three Monkeys). But, being from Turkey, eventually in his last movies he returned to the countryside tales again. Especially this movie, The Wild Pear Tree, seemed to me as if Ceylan suffered from a partial amnesia and forgot that he shot the movie Kasaba. So he blended this "brand new film idea" with his recently developed film aesthetics and here we have The Wild Pear Tree.

In his first movies Ceylan barely had a story, he only had "themes". The rest of the movie was wonderful photography and this is what he got famous for. Then, founding clever collaborations, he learnt how to tell stories as well. But the question here is: does he really have a new story to tell? Turkey has changed a lot since Kasaba, but Ceylan's representations look like they are here to stay eternally. For instance, while Ceylan still hold on to the "intellectual stuck in the countryside" stereotype, intellectuals in the Turkish countryside either made it to the metropolises or they are replaced/outdated by the emerging religious elite.

So instead of telling a new story, Ceylan seems like he chose to "garnish" what he already has, with neverending dialogues unattached to each other. Dialogue with the girl, dialogue with the mayor, with the businessman, with the writer, with the police friend, with the imams and with this and this and this. Kind of a video game, one "countryside monster" at a time. So I think this movie is a rococo remake of minimalist Kasaba.

So if you tolerate the theatrical lines in the first dialogues, the movie is a nice one to see. But in comparison to the last 2 movies of Ceylan, this is certainly a step backwards (and surprisingly, this backwardness is evident also in the photography).