Distante

It has taken me about a year now after seeing this film to write about it. Lord knows I have wanted to, after witnessing it I knew I saw something I hadn't seen before but wasn't sure why. Now after reflecting for quite some time I know, it's these characters that even now I still can't stop thinking about.

Distant briefly and slowly tells the story of a relative (Yusuf) who comes from the rurals to live briefly with a well off to do photographer (Mahmut) in the city in hopes to find employment. However it becomes clear that after Yusuf hypothesizes the idea of being a sailor and his employment prospects dim, that he's really searching for something else, some sort of purpose in his life.

Through all this soul searching we are taken through seasonal surroundings that are filmed exquisitely. The context in which they happen makes the scenes more powerful in 2 particular ones when a girl Yusuf has been following suddenly meets up with her significant other, and the look of Yusuf's face as he looks into a basket of fish and the shot and light that reflects off his tortured face. That scene in itself has to be one of the most gorgeously filmed pieces I have witness in I don't know how long.

In the end Mahmut has his own demons too, but ends up confronting his relative that he is not really trying to find a job and is forced to ask him to leave, in a scene that is very simple but has the feeling of true heartbreak.

What the viewer is left with is lots of reflecting and pondering for these 2 people who everyone can see a piece of themselves in. You should not be put off by the pace of this film it is truly worth every single breathtaking second.

Rating 10 out of 10.

Reading some of the other reviews of this film, i was reminded of both good and not so good aspects of it. But overall, i have to say it is one of the better films i have seen from any number of genres or countries recently. More than anything else, it avoided many of the typical traps of more recent international cinema, like taking nice pictures of landscapes or being 'hip', 'fun' or imitating American films like pulp fiction. The film is unique in many ways. For one thing, it is a film about relationships in which sex plays no role (unusual, especially for foreign films). It is also a film about two men's relationship to each other (also unusual - not a 'buddy film', no homosexual tension, no ego/phallic competition). It uses little dialogue, but communicates a tremendous amount. It is a simple story, yet full of complex details which are easily understood by any human being and universal in their relevance. I did not find the film dark or depressing (everything would seem this way if you watch Hollywood happy ending films all the time), but rather a true reflection of human emotions. For instance, in the scene where Mahmut realizes his cousin is gone is you see both his feeling of relief, that the cousin is gone and yet regret, that he pushed him away. Who has not felt such ambivalence - when losing a friend or lover, or in some other situation? It's rare to get these kinds of real human emotions displayed on film in a non-cliché way. As far as culture is concerned, or this being a Turkish film, i feel it strikes the very difficult balance between being a 'Turkish' film - about realities which more apply to that place (the greater struggle to make it in a Turkish city versus a European one; the greater contrast between country and city), and a universal, human story which didn't necessarily have to be set in Turkey. In this day and age where people around the world are consuming culture and fetishizing it, this film does not try to entice us as 'Turkish', nor does it try to communicate it as a 'harsh reality', or 'that's how Turkey/Istanbul IS'. And yet the cultural elements are there. I think the comparison to 'lost in translation' that somebody made is quite good. Everyone, at least in the US, was raving about that film. I personally thought it was mediocre at best. It was well put by someone as a vague story which supposedly was supposed to deal with 'disorientation' that happens to people living or traveling overseas. Even if the film was supposed to be humorous, the characters and their motivations or crises were never clear (even for a 'lighter' film or comedy, this is necessary). And i found myself being treated to a typically 'orientalist' story of the alienated Amerian overseas. Going back to 'Distant', as for the idea that this is bad acting, or too slow, or has no plot, I'm sorry but people who say this know nothing about film making and maybe nothing about being human, no offense. You do not have to be a film aficionado or cultural connoisseur to appreciate this film. This film will be two hours of your time well spent!

I am very thankful that the small college town of Abingdon, Va.- near Bristol, TN. and home of the famous Barter Theatre where Gregory Peck once acted- managed to get an art film festival togather and show this film there. Abingdon is two and a hour hours from where I live, but the trip was worth it in every sense of the word. UZAK/DISTANT is an amazing, brilliant, jarring, emotional, captivating film. As a Turkish-American, this film was not only a testimony as to what life in Turkey is like; but on a larger scale it tells the world of what it is like to be Turkish whether one lives in Istanbul, Berlin, Montreal, New York, or Omaha. It may be two hours in length as opposed to five minutes, but this is effectively our Bob Marley song. There are so many wonderful scenes in this film. It is very difficult to choose just a random few. But, for me, one telling scene takes place in a Beyoglu (downtown Istanbul) cinema. The title character, played by Mehmet Emin Toprak who sadly died in a car accident shortly after this film's completion, follows a very attractive young woman down a staircase to the cinema's main auditorium. She goes into see "Vanilla Sky." As the image of Tom Cruise is reflected from a glass, we sense that Turkish men are competing with Tom Cruise for their own women's affections even though Tom Cruise is nowhere to found in Beyoglu. The scenes shot across the Bosphorous shores are also quite revealing as they symbolize the beauty, yet desperate empty gulfs, which are a painful fact of life in Turkey. In this film, the gulf separates lovers and families. A simple, empty packet of Samsun (Turkish brand) cigarettes and a dying mouse jump off the screen the way seagulls did in the 1982 Serif Goren-Yilmaz Guney film "Yol." Many of Guney's films, including "Yol," "Suru- the Herd" (1978- completed by Zeki Okten) and "Baba-The Father" (1971) have been considered by many to be the best Turkish films ever made. Without Guney's sometimes overblown social-political anger (especially in his last film, the 1983 prison drama "Duvar-The Wall"), "Distance" captures the essence of Turkish life quite remarkably. This is a crowning achievement for a director who in my view can already be proclaimed as the Turkish equivalent to directors like Tarkovsky, Bresson, and Ozu. I can't wait to see his other films!

People must learn to watch what is up there on the screen. This is a great film that is based on a slow, careful gathering of details which serve to establish the personalities of these two men. The passivity of Yusuf (Emin Toprak), the country cousin, is well described by his fear of talking to women. He has at least three chances to start a conversation with a young woman and loses all of them. He has many decades of bachelorhood ahead of him, and maybe unemployment as well.

Mahmut is a different case. He got out of the small town by working very hard (we imagine), and his resentment of slackers like Yusuf is palpable (he leaves crumbs on the expensive carpet--the slob!). We are shown a group of friends talking about Tarkovsky among other things, and we note that Mahmut feels regret--but only slight regret--that his work has become commercial over the years. The gulf between the cousins just gets wider and wider. The mouse trap theme is wonderfully vivid, it brings out the compassion and confusion of Yusuf, and the cold-blooded problem solving of Mahmut.

I was reminded of two classic films of men driving each other nuts: Les cousins by Chabrol (the rich boy with Hitlerian pretensions played by Brialy is always in my mind) and Kiss of the Spider Woman (William Hurt can't figure out why everybody's so mean). Nuri Bilge Ceylan takes his place among the dozen important directors now active. I just hope that in future he will come to rely on collaborators, instead of directing, writing and shooting his films himself.

Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a successful photographer living in his middle-class apartment in Istanbul. His wife has recently left him, and he is suffering from feelings of isolation and loneliness. Mahmut's cousin Yusuf (Emin Toprak) loses his factory job (along with possibly 1000 others in his hometown) and travels to Istanbul to find work on the ships, where he hears the money is plentiful and easy. Yusuf moves in with Mahmut, and the social and emotional distance between the two is immediately apparent. As time goes by, Yusuf struggles to find work and desperately searches for love (or sex) to no avail, while Mahmut becomes increasingly frustrated with Yusuf's slobbish attitudes and lethargic attitude.

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's background is in photography, leading to a natural progression into films. His eye for photographic beauty is evident as Uzak is often astonishing in it's framing and colour saturation. Istanbul is shot with an aura of misery, and these two lonely souls gaze out to the grey sea with the rain and drizzle falling upon their slumped shoulders. However, amongst the greys and the browns, Uzak proves to be an extremely funny film, with Ceylan drawing humour from the most mundane of everyday occurrences. I found the most subtly funny scene is where Mahmut and Yusuf watch Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), with Yusuf getting bored at what looks like around the twenty minute point. Yusuf leaves, and Mahmut quickly puts a porn video in. Yusuf re- enters causing Mahmut to quickly turn the channel over, only for Yusuf to linger over his shoulder mindlessly staring at the TV. It brilliantly captures the increasing tension between the two, while laughing at their ridiculous situation.

The title Uzak translates at Distant, referring to the social, emotional and spiritual distance between the two, but it also refers to the global distance that is appearing in society as the world gets smaller. Communication is easier yet harder. Although Mahmut and Yusuf are physically and geographically together, they are miles apart. Mahmut is sophisticated and clean (or at least he likes to think of himself like this and models himself on Tarkovsky, but as the aforementioned scene proves, he'd much rather watch a bit of porn) and Yusuf is uneducated and messy. Mahmut has sacrificed personal happiness to live out his idyllic middle-class lifestyle, and Yusuf lazes around expecting a job and money to come to him, leading him to live out his miserable, sexually inactive life. Uzak is occasionally grim and contains little dialogue, but Ceylan's amazing eye for humour and social commentary make it a wonderful experience. And special mention must go to the two leads, who are brilliant in their roles, making it all the more tragic that Emin Toprak was killed shortly after the filming was complete.

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