Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes regular since his debut short, “Koza,” in 1995. An assured auteur from the very beginning, Ceylan made a name for Turkey on the festival circuit, and every year he brings a new title to the Croisette, critics and audiences alike already know what they’re in for. A staple for aesthetics, length, and dialogue, his films are verbose and dignified. Protagonists at existential crossroads, revolting against a comfort they’ve been trying to get accustomed to, a majestic and barren landscape. More ‘man and nature’ than ‘man versus nature,’ he turns an age-old dichotomy into a persistent, substantial exploration of the human condition through crises big and small.
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This is also true for what is now the director’s ninth feature, “About Dry Grasses,” which already emerged as an early contender for the Palme d’Or. In it, we meet thirty-something-year-old art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) as he nears the end of his mandatory service at a secondary school in a remote village in Eastern Anatolia. This isolated place of staggering beauty — as the film’s opening shot of a snowy panorama testifies — will only contribute to the protagonist’s desire to decorate his emptiness in any way possible. In time, we gather that Samet is an intellectual whose simmering rage against nobody in particular has made him bitter towards people and surroundings. There is something sad about how he rarely lashes out and tries to make himself comfortable; these internal contradictions can come to the fore in longer, wordier conversations, which also have to be philosophically sound. But with whom?
There is Samet’s fellow teacher and roommate Kenan (Musab Ekici), but the full intellectual potential is unlocked with the addition of Nuray (a captivating Merve Dizdar), also a teacher, but in an arguably better school in town. No wonder the three of them form a triangle of bickering companionship — and consequential eroticism — as they try to articulate the depths of their experiences and points of view. Ceylan treats the audience to a slow, steady build-up without the promise that we will get to know what makes each of them tick — not even the protagonist with whom we spent most of the screen time by default. But by foregrounding these interpersonal developments with some contextual scenes of the school activities, environment, and dynamics, “About Dry Grasses” can lift off in its second half.
Samet may seem rather quiet or even shy compared to his other colleagues — withdrawn during recess when everybody else reconvenes — but his idealistic nature finds more hope in the students than in the staff. When we e see him with his favorite student, Sevim (Ece Bagci, who gives a marvelous, nuanced performance), he is excitable, open, and feels important enough to overstep the limits of privacy — a behavior which will not go unnoticed and unpunished. Celiloglu conveys the inner workings of a nihilistic, self-assured man in a polished and intuitive way, more in the way he comes across when speaking. The cadence and the attentive or absent looks reveal more about him than his physical interactions with others.
The script was based on notes that writer Akin Aksu compiled during his mandatory service in Anatolia, who co-wrote the film together with Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his regular collaborator and partner, Ebru Ceylan. Aside from the many quotable lines that ornament the film’s dialogue, “About Dry Grasses” can pride itself on building a livable world beyond its syntactically heavy ethics (a trait which made me dislike Ceylan’s previous film, “The Wild Pear Tree,” immensely). While the Turkish director seems ever-fascinated with gloomy, nihilistic anti-heroes, he does vest more hope in human relationships than usual. Samet is troubled by questions of authenticity and responsibility. Still, more interestingly, he is the one Ceylan protagonist who delves the deepest into the suspicion that perhaps one can only be true to one’s own narrative and not oneself.
Ceylan has always been an analytical director. He likes to construct people, events, and situations, and through this approach, he can finally craft a world where intuition can make its way through the cracks in the rational facade. However frustrated, Samet is a teacher; to be a teacher, you have to believe in the future just enough to do your job. This may be a way out for a weary, misanthropic man to confront his own solipsism in a desert of snow and yellow grass, where the world needs his hope more than he needs it himself. [B+]
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