User Reviews

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's enigmatically titled film, 'Climates', is quiet, stark, intimate and in places, quite beautifully shot. The story of the breakdown of a relationship, it depicts lives characterised by selfishness, emotional reticence and harshly physical sexual encounters. In spite of these strengths, the film also has weaknesses: the central character, played by the director himself, seems utterly undeserving of our sympathy (beyond the fact of his inner loneliness); and it's always hard to make a film about emotional emptiness without the film itself feeling, in places, slow and empty. This is particularly true of the film's opening, which makes no concessions to the fact that the audience doesn't yet know the characters well enough to be sufficiently interested in the painful detail of their lives. But the end, it has grown to present a certain emotional power of its own. It's always rewarding to see something other than a Hollywood version of the nature of human interaction; but at times, the film wanders, lost like its protagonists.

I just saw the film here in Chicago as part of the city's International Film Fest, and I have a few feelings left hanging around. True, Ceylan's films tend to be slow and he often leaves his character's unsatisfyingly shallow (see "Uzak," an even slower film than this one). But what leaves me intrigued is just this - the fact that he doesn't develop his characters. In "Climates," there are many close up shots which linger, leaving the characters suspended on the screen to be themselves, and these script-less glimpses of them speak volumes to me actually. So yes, in terms of how much is GIVEN to us as an audience, the characters are wanting. But in terms of how much we can construct in our minds, I feel the sky's the limit. I also found the generational difference between Bahar, the young wife, and the other few characters we're introduced to to be quite heavy. For while the other few people we see are all disillusioned by life and lazily struggle with it in the safe realms of their relative bourgeois lives, she seems to be the only one who sees something wrong with the whole picture. The catch is that while she sees through it, she also feels disillusioned by how wrong all the wrongs are, and so she keeps it to herself and simply starts crying. Interspersed throughout the film are subtle focuses on tiny details, like a bee, or snow flakes, which really highlight a rather poetic quality to the film. Overall I found the film to be falsely shallow. Audiences with short attention spans be warned!

We have recently heard about too much about Iklimler. There were mix of comments about the movie and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Half of them were negative, half of them were positive. There must be confusion in evaluating his movies. Then I went to the movie to see by myself.

At first sight Iklimler has absent story. The movie began from uncertain situation and goes on through uncertain path. Writer and director should have been separated with each other in order to give double power to the movie. Nuri Bilge Ceylan can be successful director, but he is not a writer as good as his directing talent.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan wanted to show us how to make a movie with simple story –even no story. The players are ordinary, music's are ordinary, but the movie itself is really artistic. He was focusing to the eyes effectively and eyes showed us emotions powerfully.

Natural voices were used in the movie and this technique should have been very difficult if we take into consideration open field's scenery. The conditions are not totally controllable in this kind of areas. This voice preference shows us Nuri Bilge's self confidence.

We can not criticize players well because they were seen in backgrounds. The movie itself depended on artistic scenes too much, not on players. Even though Nazan Kirilmis and Ebru Ceylan were good enough. Nuri Bilge himself is not talented as his directing skill. Nuri Bilge was known with misery. But after his playing it seems he will lose this misery. Other players were too naive and not suitable for the movie.

Panoramas were excellent. From the beginning Antalya-Kas, goes on with Istanbul-Beyoglu and finally Agri- Ishak Pahsa Palace. The winter season reflected with a hundred percent reality and beauty.

When we look at the overall Nuri Bilge made ego satisfaction in all writing, directing and playing dimensions. In directing dimension it is true that he is probably the best director in Turkey. Other dimensions were not sufficient to make the movie perfect. However, Nuri Bilge Ceylan did well with Iklimler for Turkish Cinema.

A self-indulgent art movie about the break-up of a marriage written and directed by the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan in which he stars as the husband and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan appears as the wife who leaves him. Is it therapy or a home-movie for the art house crowd? Or is it an incisive analysis of the things that divide men and women and of how love can come to an end? It improves in the memory if you can divorce yourself from the incestuous feeling that it's just a bit too much like self-abuse and it's certainly bleak enough not to be likable. Likability isn't something Ceylan aspires to. Whether he is 'acting' or playing 'himself' he comes across as a crass egocentric bore; your sympathies lie with the wife, (though initially she, too, seems something of a harridan, her actions at best irrational if not vindicative).

The separation occurs reasonably early in the film and then we spend too much time with the self-pitying husband as he tries to figure out his wife's actions. In the meantime he is not above a bit of screwing around himself, cuckolding an old friend. This is a warts-and-all portrait of a marriage, as rough as Strindberg or Albee, and yet it still feels like a vanity project. Woody Allen's movies may be shamelessly autobiographical, certainly in their milieu if not precisely in the literal sense, but Allen is a comic genius who can find humour and absurdity in even the most painful of situations. I worry when a film-maker chooses a subject as obviously close to his heart as this one and then films it with himself as the central character as if it was an observation of 'real life'.

On a technical level it is quite masterly with Gokhan Tiryaki's camera luminously observing, often in extreme close-up, the slow and painful death of this relationship and in locations that are far from attractive. This is the first of Ceylan's films that I have seen and their is no doubting his virtuosity. I just wish he had put it to better purpose.

This film was really impressive (I agree with everything localdj2001 said), and much better than I expected. I saw it at the Melbourne Film Festival to a capacity audience.

Some people cannot enjoy a film if they cannot feel for the characters. If so, this is not the film for you. The characters are all flawed, and not particularly likable (kudos to the director/actor for allowing himself and his wife to be portrayed in this manner).

We have a reasonable size established Turkish community in Melbourne. This film introduced me to a more modern view of the Turkish that we don't see here. Culturally, it was very interesting.

The film reeks with emotional honesty. It is mature, adult cinema. The story is somewhat cryptic as there are aspects of a collapsing relationship that are never revealed. But unfolding events reveal that everything is not what it seems. And real life is like this - we see something and think we know, but we only know the little glimpse we have seen.

What is said in this film is sparse but interesting. And what is not said is just as interesting. There are very long takes, some of which nothing much seems to happen. In others, there is much happening.

The title is very clever because it adds weight to the background of the film, which is the changing seasons. The cinematography was really stunning, especially at the end. Lighting was terrific. The film lingers long after the credits.

This is the first film I have seen by this director, but he is surely very accomplished. If very high quality, intelligent, artful European cinema is your taste, go see this.

The middle-aged university teacher has an affair with a younger girl. They are not happy and he acts on the edge of brutality. It all ends, but none of them seem to want that.

The camera often stands still and the acting is made mostly by the eyes. It's clever made, a different way of narrating and full of drama.

But is this drama through miming and slow-talk enough? It can be, but not really in the hands, or eyes, of these actors. But the task has also been extremely difficult. It takes very much to go through with this. But the film-makers come close. Really close, but anyway, it's all a little rhapsodic.

Ceylan's previous feature, Distant, won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; its glowing reception cemented his status as a major contemporary auteur. In Climates, Ceylan takes us to stunning locations all across Turkey in what may be his most personal film to date - in addition to directing and starring, he also wrote and edited. Filmed with his signature contemplative style, it is a highly subdued, deliberately-paced work that conveys more through silence than through exposition. The cinematography by Gökhan Tiryaki achieves a new high for high-definition video with its refined, poetic images, while Ceylan's precise, beautiful compositions give the film a characteristically elegiac tone. This achingly poignant film subtly captures the emotional tremors that ripple through a fallow relationship.

Saw this film today,thought it well made and in spite of longueurs worth staying with it. It might be worth mentioning that the main character has no real saving graces in my opinion and one of his skills as a director is to bring out the overwhelmingly controlling nature of the character, be it the dream of the girlfriend of being buried in sand or the casual way he deals with all in his path. Secondly, I did find the scene with his former girlfriend something of a challenge as it takes a t least 5 minutes to realise that this violent sexual scene is consensual, so for those who are expressing reservations about a film like Red Road and its scene of violent sex, this one is to my mind far more brutal.

I saw climates yesterday at the NY film festival.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a director who uses himself or his relatives to act in his own movies. In Climates he(Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and his real life wife (Ebru Ceylan) are the main characters and his mother and father are his real life parents as well. In his role, he is a professor at a university and his wife is in visual arts. During their trip in Kas which is a very hot place located in southern Turkey these two fall out and their conversations almost come to an end in this hot climate.This not sharing much leads up to the husband asking for their separation.As they got back the regret the husband feels takes him to find his wife with a crew she was working with in the beautiful but very cold and snowy city of Agri located in Eastern Turkey.The climate changes and so does their minds..

This movie is more of analyzing the relationships between people. His success comes from how he could reflect the depth of his characters and their emotions and minds with very little conversation.Nuri Bilge Ceylan's style is based on a strong plot. He focuses more on human relations with very little happening around them but more importantly what is happening inside of them and between them. I enjoyed every second of the movie with curiosity.I recommend this movie highly.

Palm D'Or nominated feature by the director of Distant (2002). This is nearly as good as that one. Like it, it's a slow, contemplative art film about relationships. This one stars the director and his wife, Ebru Ceylan, as an unhappily married couple on vacation. They mutually decide to break up. Much of the rest of the film follows the husband trying to cope with his loss. The latter part of the film has him follow his wife to a snowy mountain region where she has moved for work. I hate to harp on it, and I frequently attack others who have this complaint about films, but the main problem with Climates is that the protagonist is incredibly unlikeable. Like I said, I hate to have that complaint, because there are so many bad people in the world. Why shouldn't some movies explore the less than enviable characters? I suppose, though - and this is how I felt about this film - spending a lot of time with such a character can become something of a bummer. Yet he is a human being, and I do like that Ceylan explores him. He's not exactly redeemed by the end (there's a certain act in the movie that's pretty much unforgivable), but we understand him. The end of the film makes it well worth seeing (besides, it's only just over 90 minutes anyway). Those final two scenes are exquisite. Despite my complaints, this is worthwhile.

Without giving away any detail, from the plot of the movie, I can declare to cinema goers that this film is one to seek and watch. The film is very intelligently directed, and the acting is superb.

Not since 'Gegen Die Wand' has Turkish cinema shown it self capable of delivering such a movie.

The acting is also significant, and the way the lead actors portray the indifference and backdrops in middle-class Turkish society is subliminal.

I recommend this movie to anyone who has a keen appetite for European/Turkish cinema.

Bravo.

I think it was Jean Paul Sartre who said: "Hell is other people." He was, of course, referring to relationships and no doubt of those between men and women, primarily.

Nuri Ceylan's film is about the breakdown of relationships to which all of us, probably, can readily relate (no pun intended). Essentially, the story is about a couple who separate – it's not clear if they are married – leaving the man, Isa (Nuri Ceylan) to go back to prior girl friends for solace while the woman, Bahar (Ebru Ceylan), goes off to do her thing in movie-making. Isa, however, tires of his loneliness and eventually tracks down Bahar in an attempt to entice her back, promising children, stability, loyalty etc.

Things don't quite go according to plan, however, as you will discover when you see this one.

As with the first of Ceylan's I saw, Distant (2002), there is a small cast of characters (note, for this story, he uses his real parents to play the parents of the character Isa), minimal dialog, long takes, medium to extreme close-ups, static camera shots – all now well-known techniques of this consummate director of commonplace stories that are not so commonplace when you get into them. And, no music sound track – only music you hear on radio or TV.

For me, apart from the direction, the most impressive aspect is the quality of the acting in this, in Distant and, more recently, Three Monkeys (2008). As I've said elsewhere, it's also a mark of an experienced and intuitive film-maker who knows exactly what he wants his actors to do, from a slight head motion, a cast of an eye, a slight frown and so on. Significantly, none of the characters are particularly likable, especially Isa who clearly shows the shallow depths of his persona on a number of occasions – a Ceylanian take on the state of humanity, I think, allowing me to speculate about whether Ceylan is somewhat misanthropic.

Frankly, anybody who's ever been in love should appreciate and understand the difficulties of this couple as they wrestle with their innermost feelings, doubts, dreams, and so on. Although, if you don't like slow-paced story-telling, you might not be able to take the long silences while a man and woman simply look at each other or, worse, avoid each other's gaze.

However, again for me, it's just a simple and voyeuristic pleasure to watch two people as they try to sort out their emotional lives – much as we all try to sort out the same each day of our own lives. It may be uncomfortable to behold sometimes, but, well, that's life, ain't it? And, sometimes a hell of a ride, no?

Give it a seven out of ten. Recommended for all except kids.

March 17, 2012.

If you want to enjoy some of the splendid natural and man-made beauty of Turkey, "Climates" will satisfy you and maybe even have you heading for a travel agent. If you love studying faces, guessing at thoughts and watching prolonged takes on a modest range of emotions, settle back and enjoy "Climates". If you love to love or hate self-centred and non-communicative males on the one hand (and Isa's a manipulative cad though, to give him his due, he doesn't seem to know what the hell he wants from women) and neglected, communication-starved females on the other, you've hit paydirt with this one. With its minimalist plot, you have a great deal of time to study relationships and facets of human nature. But it just wasn't my cup of tea. I intended to switch it off half a dozen times, but persevered in the hope someone would express themselves intelligibly to someone else, instead of shadow boxing. Even a scene of violent love-making (this is a euphemism by the way) left me annoyed - it was like silent consensual rape. The one occasion I felt uplifted was when Bahar (Isa's main prey) recounted a dream. She became animated and alive, though Isa got nothing of the beauty of spirit she displayed (as he was surely scripted not to). Altogether a bleak portrait of the search for non-loneliness.

The outstanding fact about Nuri Bilge Ceylan is that he technically has got no juvenilia, in the sense that even his earlier works contain a sort of adeptness in this craft that I find praiseworthy.

The films of Michelangelo Antonioni will either bore you to death or captivate you in the most subtle of ways. I fall into the latter category and am profoundly influenced by his work and the filmic conventions integral to them. It was my discovery of Antonioni's work that led to my discovery of New German Cinema, both of which ultimately shaped the way I watched and interpreted films. Brought up on a steady diet of Hollywood movies, I was conditioned to be a passive viewer, one swept away by movies made solely for entertainment purposes. In many ways I still am that little boy who gets lost in the fantasy world on the silver screen, but as an adult I've learned the films that truly make me feel alive are the ones forcing me to be an active participant in what is being projected before me. In other words, films that challenge me by asking questions in lieu of providing absolutes.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's is an Antonioni disciple and his 2006 film Climates is unmistakably an Antonioni clone. From the story of a couple's dissolving relationship on vacation (one part L'Avventura one part La Notte) right down to the compositions of every shot and the very deliberate pacing, Ceylan wears his influence with pride. Cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki beautifully frames every shot, where the meticulous compositions are allowed to play out in patient long takes. As it is with Antonioni's films, the minimal use of editing allows the viewer to study things they normally wouldn't get a chance to even consider. Things like landscape, diegetic sounds and subtleties expressed by the actors, all take on heightened significance where, ultimately, this minutiae plays a crucial role filling in the blanks predominant throughout the film. In other words, films like Ceylan's and Antonioni's challenge their viewers to think, to read between the lines and to actively search for context, meaning and subtext within every frame of their films.

As much as I love to revisit the thrills of my youth with standard Hollywood fare, nothing bests a filmgoing experience where I'm not only expected to think and feel as an adult, but am forced to act like one. What an interesting world we'd live in if the blockbusters were all films designed for adults.

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/

A director-as an artist-may choose to tell his story by using different parameters i.e.eloquent treatment of dialogue,scenery,costumes,soundtrack and sometimes visual effects. Another may yet choose to tell his/her story using spare plot,minimal dialogue,long still shoots and creative atmosphere.

Three-time Cannes winner director,actor,photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan follows the second path...

*Spoiler*

A sequel to Uzak,Iklimler,very simply is about a middle-aged academic still writing his thesis and his younger wife(director himself and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan)who pass through the seasons in their marriage.As the story moves on-from summer to fall then to winter-we see the scenery and locations change in parallel with their inner conflicts.The couple cannot reconcile; separation and break-up is unavoidable at the end.

*Spoiler

Ceylan,with almost a Tarkovskian approach tells his story in the manner of a true auteur he is.

This film, beautiful to see, was a wonderful character study. Slow, but that was part of the charm. Perhaps Bergman inspired some of it. But this was better than Bergman as far as I was concerned. I think it dealt with changing gender relations in current modernizing Turkey as well-- in ways that were not at all simplistic. The metaphor of the seasons behind the narrative is compelling, but does not dominate. The women's characters were well drawn. In some ways, the woman we expect to be the most independent is not completely so. The woman who does achieve independence is remarkably feminine at the same time. So good, I had to see it again. It didn't lose anything at all on second viewing.

The film is developed on a university teacher who has unstable relation with women. The film is so valuable for the man and women who don't understand each other. Excellent description of average man and woman behaviors. It shows that there are no reasonable causes of feeling to others depending on his or her character or their behaviors. Scenes are like paintings with human figures. Must be watched with patience and in rest. Lonely people can feel the sense better. The Director's other movies especially "Uzak"/Distant are recommended to feel the atmosphere better. Players, especially the amateur ones (in fact there is no professional one) so successful.

I had high hopes for this Turkish movie, since i have heard/read a lot of the hype around this movie. I was seriously disappointed: by the lack of depth of the characters , especially the directer playing Isa, he is just portraying a cliché of a Turkish man not able to communicate his feelings, he is being a total bastard and not able to learn and develop as the film progresses. (Obviously my husband totally disagrees!!!) The disturbing sex scene with Serap reminds me of cheap Turkish movies from the seventies, where men rape Turkish women in the same manner - only that Serap seems to somehow enjoy this (very annoying laughter) What i liked very much is the scenery and Bahar sweating on the beach, which looked just beautiful. But there was nothing of a "true soul" except Bahars face turning from a smile into rolling down tears from her face.

As in KASABA, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's first major feature, İKLİMLER (CLIMATES) is structured around the seasons. The action begins during the height of summer at the seaside resort of Kaş, where İsa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and his partner Bahar (Ebru Ceylan) agree to separate, as they believe they have nothing to give to their relationship. The action shifts to autumn in İstanbul, where it rains perpetually and İsa tries to continue his career as a university educator while having occasional flings with Serap (Nazan Kırılmış). The film's third act shifts to the eastern Turkish city of Doğubeyazit, where Bahar works on a television program; despite the twin disadvantages of blizzards and high winds, İsa tries his best to patch up his relationship with Bahar.

The natural settings (or "climates") of the film comment on the state of İsa's mind. Despite cloudless skies and a calm sea (suggesting openness and/or happiness) İsa's mood remains perpetually melancholy; unable to communicate his feelings or establish any contact - either emotional or physical - with Bahar, he is imprisoned by pride. The rains of İstanbul that plash on the windows sum up his perpetual unhappiness, as he vainly searches for a new relationship. The winter snows of Doğubeyazit have a similar function as the snows in UZAK; they symbolize İsa's frozen soul as he tries and fails to improve his existence.

İKLİMLER revisits the themes now characteristic of Ceylan's work: the inability of individuals to communicate with one another, the ways in which words are used to obscure rather than facilitate meaning. The script is a sparse one; for much of the time we see the characters looking to the left and the right of the camera without speaking. We would love to know what they think, but Ceylan will not give us that privilege. When the characters do speak - for example, when İsa promises to change if Bahar returns to him, they do so in clichés.

Yet the overall tone of İKLİMLER is a little more bitter as compared to UZAK, for instance. There is a long and savage sex scene between İsa and Serap, where the protagonists seem almost animal-like with their guttural grunts and gasps for breath. İsa seems hell-bent on dominating Serap through sheer force, as he pins her to the ground and forces himself on to her. If words have no meaning, it seems, then human beings behave like beasts. In light of such knowledge, we understand that İsa's personality will never change, despite his protestations to the contrary.

İKLİMLER once again makes pertinent comments about the media, and the ways in which people use it to shy away from rather than confront experience. İsa is shown taking photographs of ancient sites; for him it's the technology that matters, not the experience of communing with the ghosts of the people who once lived there. Likewise Bahar works as an art director on a television series, where all emotions are false and/or contrived, dependent on a director's whim rather than on human feelings. There is one sequence where a young couple (Ceren Olcay, Abdullah Demirkubuz) are shown re-enacting a sequence beside a grave for the cameras, that forms a pertinent contrast to İsa and Bahar's relationship.

The film employs the narrative style now characteristic of Ceylan's work, with viewers encouraged to focus on aspects of the mise-en- scene rather than simply following the story. Lengthy shots are interspersed with close-ups and two-shots, while the use of repeated shots (for example, close-ups of characters smoking cigarettes) are employed to suggest sterility within the protagonists' lives.

Perhaps İKLİMLER lacks the sheer visual bravado of a film like UZAK, but it is a powerful experience to watch all the same.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is no ordinary director. This fact becomes evident from the very first few frames of his "Climates" (2006), a rather languidly paced, wonderfully minimalist piece of work. We come across an odd looking couple, a young woman, Bahar (Ebru Ceylan) and her visibly older partner (?) Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan). It is not clear if they are married or engaged or just living in. They are on a holiday somewhere and Isa is busy photographing some ruins, while Bahar looks on with odd stares. The ambient sounds of buzzing bees and chirping birds add to the mood of the lazy afternoon and the seemingly laid back attitude of the couple on screen. Only just before the title credits appear, there is a long take of Bahar staring right at you (although in the film it's Isa she is looking at). And suddenly, tears start rolling down. Clearly, all is not well.

It is soon established that the couple are in a troubled relationship. They are out of love. Bahar seems trapped and suffocated in this relationship. This part is highlighted in a real neat dream sequence of a blurred image of Isa smothering Bahar with sand as she lies on the beach. And later, Isa, who is also aware of the distance between them, rehearses lines to convey that they should probably part ways. These two sequences and one awkward dinner table conversation with a friend quickly impress you. You instantly sit up and take notice. Perhaps you are watching yet another minimalist European masterwork.

If only the same sentiment stayed on after the first 50 odd minutes, after which it appears that Ceylan probably exhausted the greatest written scenes in his visibly unaccomplished script, which simply isn't potent enough in the first place. The plot, if any, merely delves on Bahar and Isa's break-up and Isa's attempt to reconcile. That's all you can really write about it. The deficient script wouldn't matter much, if all of the handful of characters that appear on screen make up for the lack of substantial meat in the writing. But the focus is mostly only on Isa, while the other players, although introduced, appear in some important scenes, but aren't much looked into. We only know them superficially.

For example, sometime later, we are introduced to Serap (Nazan Kirilmis), apparently an ex of Isa. Isa runs into Serap, old romance/lust rekindles, and he invites himself into her home, in spite of the fact that she is now carrying on with a friend of his! Serap and Isa stare at each other awkwardly for a long while and exchange small talk about their respective relationships. Serap smokes her cigarettes with elan, and in the moments of silence we can actually hear the sound of smoke being drawn in every puff till the cigarette burns out. Just Lovely! But suddenly something happens that makes you wonder what kind of man Isa really is!

This is further corroborated in a sequence in the snow-clad eastern Turkey, to where Isa travels to find his lost love, Bahar, in an attempt to win her back! How fickle can one get? He meets a friendly cabbie, who doesn't ask much except to be sent a photograph he takes of him against a snowy landscape. Isa agrees and the cabbie writes down his address on a piece of paper. But later, very nonchalantly, he throws the piece of paper in an ash tray in a coffee shop! One wonders if the only character that carries so much weight in the script should come across as so unlikeable that you would hardly even care about him much.

"Climates" had potential to completely succeed only in scenes like these that highlight some behavioral traits of Ceylan's characters, since plot-wise he didn't have much to go on. More talent, though, is invested in capturing breathtakingly beautiful landscapes across Turkey in some of the finest cinematography this reviewer had the pleasure of coming across. Add to that, some of the greatest sound design, capturing ambient sounds that you simply fall in love with, and wonderfully natural acting that you can't forget for a while.

The title, apart from the physical change of seasons we see on the screen, also alludes to the ups and downs in human relationships. But more so, it is symbolic of the fickleness of a human being, his shifting inclinations that change with time. "Climates" shows us in its subtle, simple narrative, how a man can break up, stray and then attempt to make up again! "Climates", thus succeeds on a considerable level, as a romantic mood piece. Only it ends up being a little too simple and a tad hollow for a film trying to bring out the complicated functioning of the human mind.

There certainly is sheer grace in the mechanics of "Climates", and Ceylan proves that he has the skill for the aesthetics. Only one wishes there was more heart in it too.

Score: 8/10

A minimalistic and thoroughly miserable, painfully slow 90 minutes film about miserable bourgeois Istanbulites in various climates. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan reminds me of Bergman and Ozu but lacks the formers comic touch with kept his best films from descending into tedium and the latter heart.

The film follows Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and Bahar (Ebru Ceylan)- the move of casting himself and his wife in a film about a couple smacks a little of self indulgence, lets hope there marriage isn't this bad!. Board Bahar leaves her husband Isa who find solace in ex girlfriend Serap (Nazan Kirilmis-The most annoying lengthy laughs in cinema history) culminating in a very disturbing sex scene where Isa bullies Serep into having sex in a detached continuous take. Isa eventually tracks down Bahar and attempts a reconciliation.

This is a film that insists on taking it's time and was for me a chore to watch scenes seem to drag on for ever the director coldly holding the frame on stationary characters, presumable so we can feel there inner turmoil, the worst offender being a scene where he holds the camera on Bahar for about six minutes so she can produce a few tear drops and allow them to run down her face. You got to admire that kind of bravery in a director to go against the Hollywood snappy dialogue and short scenes.Also admirable was the spreading throughout the film of subtle focuses on tiny details, like the sound of a bee, or snow flakes. However the film just isn't very interesting, the characters are undeveloped the script vague the ending unsatisfying, I can appreciate Ceylan intentions and his integrity but this film does very little for me.