Inner landscapes Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is also a photographer. His panoramic images, stretching time and heightening emotion, portray Turkey in close up. French film critic Michel Ciment sheds light on his work. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the few great landscape artists of of a child (pages 128-129), with half his face shrouded in contemporary cinema. Like Jane Campion, Terrence Malick, darkness. His stylized, simple shots come close to black and Jia Zhangke, Jeff Nichols and Bruno Dumont (his favorite white, perhaps influenced by his experience as a photographer. French director), Ceylan celebrates the natural world of his native land, in his case Turkey, turning it into a character. The cosmic spirit of his movie-making parallels that of In his debut film, Kasaba (The Small Town), released in 1997, Kiarostami and Tarkovsky, but his interest in the human condition, he uses the passing seasons as a vehicle for the narrative, in isolation and loneliness and our connection to others make highlighting the intimate relationship between landscapes and him the soul mate of Bergman and Antonioni, whose intro- farmers (see photo, page 130-131, bottom). spective gaze he shares. This photo (pages 132-133) of a man He was born in Istanbul, but his parents moved when he was sitting at table in a bare interior and gazing out at us is two to a village near the Aegean, where he later shot Koza, an (a limitation of photography as a medium) devoid of any reverse early short, and his first two features, Kasaba and Clouds of angle shot of a female character, something that appears May (1999). He remained in this Dardanelles village, his frequently in his films, especially Climates (2006), Winter Sleep father’s birthplace, for ten years before returning to Istanbul. and The Wild Pear Tree. In the first, spouses (played by the His nostalgia for the landscape brought him back again and director and his wife) separate and fail to reconcile because again as a youth, to help the locals. their desires are at odds. The deteriorating relationship is drawn out over three seasons: summer in a seaside resort in For his 15th birthday, someone gave Ceylan a photography southern Turkey, autumn in Istanbul and winter in the moun- book as a present. It marked him for life and inspired him to tains. The outdoor scenes are the objective correlative of the take up photography—a profession he exercised for some characters’ feelings. In his Winter Sleep (Palme d’Or at Cannes 20 years before gravitating toward film at the late age of 36. in 2014), inspired by three Chekhov stories, a former actor Ceylan is categorical about how different film and photogra- holes up in a hotel dug into the rocks in Cappadocia (see photo phy are as a means of expression, the former being an art of village in this region, page 132-133, bottom) with his sister of motion, even if this photo of young people running toward and wife. Ceylan films scenes of domestic conflict some 20 min- the sea (pages 126-127) deftly expresses the movement of their utes in length between the actor and both women with a shock- bodies. Photography taught him about the significanceing intensity worthy of Scenes From a Marriage, pointing up of framing an image, a hallmark of his movie-making. disillusionment, bitterness and wounds that still run deep. The snow flurries over the region, the landscapes metamorphose as Apart from his third feature, Uzak (Distant, 2002), which is if echoing emotional relationships as they shut down and grow set in Istanbul and revolves around a city dweller welcoming cold. In Ceylan’s selection of photographs for the magazine, his country cousin, all of Ceylan’s movies take place in three shots of snowy expanses highlight the artist’s sensitivity nature—which, he says, “human beings in the end are part to these visual themes. A sense of melancholy, the expression of of just like plants and animals.” Everything transpires as if the a general malaise, is embodied in a cosmology of a kind that filmmaker was steeped in nostalgia for some kind of lost inno- also haunts the Romantic paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. cence and harmony, crystallized in the image of a peasant woman shot from behind as she looks out over a landscape of Like his first works, The Wild Pear Tree (2018), his eighth cypress trees (pages 134-135). He suffers the pain of having feature film, is set in the Dardanelles Strait, between the Sea left his rural village for the big city, although he doesn’t ideal- of Marmara and the Aegean. The narrative follows the return ize the countryside, far from it. In two films, Three Monkeys of a teacher’s son and would-be writer to his rural village, (2008) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), both thrillers, and his encounters with the mayor, an aspiring novelist, it’s the wind and rain that dominate, with low heavy skies at two imams, a local builder and his father, a compulsive dusk and dawn. The opening shot of Three Monkeys is steeped gambler engulfed in solitude. There is fog, snow and rain, but in foreboding as a car drives along a dark forest road at night- also interludes of sunshine heralding Ceylan’s greater fall and vanishes over the horizon. In the latter, a nocturnal, acceptance of the world. The constant movement of the labyrinthine crime story, a convoy searches all night for young protagonist, Sinan, is captured with a hand-held a body in the Anatolian steppe, two hours from Ankara. camera, signaling a new openness. Sinan probably resembles At sunset, a storm is rumbling, a dog barks in the distance. the teenage Ceylan with his keen ambition, as does “I am a bit of a dark character,” confesses the author, the character in Uzak and other of the director’s creations. who loves the interplay of shadow and light, as in this photo Thus a master of realism sketches out a self-portrait. 137 .ylno sesoprup noitartsulli rof paM .elleutcartnoc non ,evitartsulli etraC .eiklaW eiklaT / uaenibroC eniotnA © : etnavius egaP