Nuages de mai

Reading other evaluations of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's MAYIS SIKINTISI (CLOUDS OF MAY), we see some familiar adjectives ("slight," "poetic," "atmospheric") that are frequently invoked without any real attempt to engage with the film's major preoccupations.

Set in the northwest village of Yenice in Çanakkale province (the district where the battle of Gallipoli was fought in 1915), Ceylan focuses on Emin (played by the director's father M. Emin Ceylan), a landowner of some standing, who is trying to fight the government's plan to cut down some trees on his land that have stood for over seven decades. The echoes of Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD are obvious: like the earlier play, the trees in MAYIS SIKINTISI serve as a metaphor for an enduring rural life under threat from industrialization. In the pursuit of immediate financial gain, whole tracts of land are being sacrificed to the bulldozer. Emin spends most of his time learning the niceties of the law so as to fight the government on their own terms; if he can prove them wrong, then he will have emerged successful.

Yet Ceylan reveals the irony of Emin's position, as his obsession with the law blinds him to the real truths of life contained in the rural landscape - the elements, the trees, mountains and foliage, all of which have been there for centuries and will outlast all the protagonists. We are made aware of its importance through the soundtrack, which sacrifices dialogue to sound - birds cheeping, the breeze rustling through the trees, the sound of footfall on the wooded ground. Humans are intimately connected to the universe; once they become aware of their kinship with all living creatures, including the birds, bees, insects and flowers, they lose their obsession with materialism.

MAYIS SIKINTISI introduces a second level of irony through the presence of Emin's son Muzaffer (Muzaffer Özdemir), who like Ceylan himself is trying to make a film set in his hometown using his family as actors. The film-within-a-film structure enables Ceylan to criticize his own profession; the obsession with shot- construction, light, sound and the "correct" delivery of lines renders Muzaffer as myopic as his father. Although making a film about nature, he is impervious to it. What matters more to him are mundane details such as the cost of film stock, or ensuring that he can work together with his İstanbul-based friend Sadık (Sadık İncesu).

Within this complex format Ceylan makes some more pragmatic points about the advantages and disadvantages of rural life. Although the local community provides a source of support for Emin and his family, it can prove restricting. This is especially true for Saffet (Emin Toprak) who has failed once more to enter university and has to spend his days laboring in a factory. He desperately wants to leave his hometown and try his chances in İstanbul; but as Muzaffer informs him, the opportunities therein are limited. City and country remain forever separate; those who migrate in search of their fortunes often end up disillusioned.

Stylistically speaking, MAYIS SIKINTISI unfolds slowly with the emphasis placed on image rather than narrative. Viewers should focus on the mise-en-scene - the relationship of sound to vision, and the placement of characters within the frame - rather than expecting a story to unfold. By such means they should be able to understand Ceylan's enduring preoccupation with the elemental world, and how we might continue to appreciate it despite our apparent obsession with personal and social advancement.

Having seen this movie had the same effect on me as I first saw "tree with the wooden clogs" by Ermanno Olmi. It was like being part of a real life (of real people). No imitations, no caricatures, nothing artificial, nothing but the life itself as we all live it. Yes there is love, there are expectations, there are hopes, everything that is part of life is here. It's these art pieces that still give me hope for humanity. They make us see how pure we all are, despite everything imposed on us by commercial approaches in Hollywood cinema.

The dialogs, the acting, the directing all support this pure approach in this film. Human beings are all reflected in this movie without any makeup (in both sense). The director's first full length movie "Kasaba -The Town" was a small masterpiece. Now this movie proves that he can still create masterpieces, even when he enlarges his vision.

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.

Again the same level and nothing changing, better than the contrary! It is a film that fascinates people with its long duration and different location shootings. It looks so real to life, I can't tell you. The realism of the dialogue is great! All players performed very realistic. Even the little boy Ali plays better than most Turkish players today. Nuri Bilge Ceylan presents us in a realistic way how a film has turned into art.

⭐ 100/81