THE WILD PEAR TREE: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest, lengthy, loving dissection of family, country, religion -- but not quite politics

Nothing overtly political ever crops up in the latest endeavor from Turkish filmmaker, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Not even a tiny aside such as the bit of "Erdo-gone" graffiti you might have noticed oh-so-briefly in that popular Turkish cat documentary from 2016, Kedi. Yet I defy any viewer who lasts out the 188-minute running time (this should not be difficult, given the quality of filmmaking here) of Ceylan's newest, THE WILD PEAR TREE, not to feel grateful that he or she lives almost anywhere else.

Mr. Ceylan, shown at left, never stints on showing us how beautiful are the Turkish landscapes, full of the kind of flora, fauna and gorgeous scenery you'd want to embrace. It is the people here, thoroughly fucked-up as they seem (which is standard in this filmmaker's work), who will give you pause.

Major family dysfunction is the rule, and while Ceylan is more than adept at spreading responsibility -- no single person, nor even an entire generation, comes off as villain here -- still, the buck must stop somewhere. And so it does. Just off-screen. The restraints that hobble anything close to a democratic society -- while inflicting helplessness and depression on that society, as it forever scrambles and strains to make ends meet by hook (or mostly crook) -- are inescapably shown.

Yet so long as Ceylan points no obvious fingers, he is allowed, thankfully for intelligent film lovers, to keep working and even to have his movies chosen as Turkey's Best Foreign Language Film submissions, as was this one. Mr. Ceylan has so far had five of his films submitted by Turkey in the BFLF category, but none have been actually nominated. TrustMovies suspects they are simply too demanding and lengthy for Academy members to appreciate fully.

The Wild Pear Tree has at its center a young man named Sinan (played by Aydin Doğu Demirkol, above) at last out of college who has written his first book -- that eponymously titled fruit tree --  and has come back to his family and home town to try to find financing for publication. How he does this involves everything from bureaucratic snivelling to family (depending upon how you perceive it) betrayal.

All this allows us to get quite an inclusive and all-angles view of his father (a fine Murat Cemcir, above), an addictive gambler; his angry yet steadfast mother (Bennu Yuldirimlar, below); and Sinan's grandparents;

as well as a look at some of his friends, a would-be lover, and a local politician, a business owner and even a successful author (Serkan Keskin, below) to whom he turns, somewhat angrily, for help.

As in his other lengthy and extremely rich movie, Winter Sleep, The Wild Pear Tree is distinguished by not only by its very strong character studies but also via some equally vital and almost shockingly lengthy conversations/philosophical discussions about writing/accommodating and religion, during which we eagerly hang on to each new turn of phrase and idea expressed. (The gorgeous, beautifully framed cinematography -- by Gökhan Tiryaki -- helps, too.)

We also find ourselves, in a tale told via occasional fantasy and dream, moving from anger and dismay to a sad and quiet understanding of the various characters and their needs and actions. The final father/son scene is as surprising and full-bodied as you could wish, ending the film on a note that is simultaneously hopeful yet might also be a mere continuation of all that has come before, now passed down to a new generation. However you choose to view it, The Wild Pear Tree takes an immediate place as one of this year's best.

A Cinema Guild release, the film opens in its U.S. theatrical premiere this Wednesday, January 30, in New York CIty at Film Forum and on February 8 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, followed by openings in another dozen cities over the weeks to come. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Full-bodied characters, brilliant/beautiful cinema from Turkey: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's WINTER SLEEP

I usually don't read reviews of films I'm about to cover, but in the case of WINTER SLEEP -- the new Palme d'Or-winning film from Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan -- once I finished reading Stuart Klawans' review in The Nation of The Imitation Game (a film I had already covered), I found myself continuing to read his thoughts on Ceylan's film. Why didn't I stop and put it aside to finish later? Well, Klawans is a very good writer, and once I'd begun, I didn't want to stop. So rapturous was his notice (you can read it here: click and keep scrolling down) that I immediately gave it to my spouse and asked if the film interested him. It did, despite its rather unusual length (three hours and 16 minutes: and spouse is not a fan of lengthy movies).

Although Mr. Klawans recommends seeing Winter Sleep in a theater, we were sent a DVD screener to watch. As shown on our large, widescreen TV, the quality was, in a word, sensational. Visually, this is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. While Ceylan's work (the filmmaker is shown at left) is often quite lovely to view, his latest outdoes any of his earlier films. From the incredible vistas that open the movie -- huge rocks sprouting from the mountain soil and homes that seem to emerge literally from the hills -- to the many interior shots, with lighting and color unlike anything I've seen, the movie is visual splendor. Still, visuals can only go so far. Incredibly, Mr. Ceylan also offers us a situation and characters as precise and special as those visuals, and then tops it all with some of the finest dialog -- also precise (in a manner that is able to gracefully unfurl character) and deep, sometimes profound -- that you're likely to hear in any film this year.

The movie is a wonder, a marvel. And while those three-plus hours don't exactly speed by, the material here -- characters and situation -- grabs us so strongly that we're not for a moment disengaged from this film. The situation blooms out of character, chiefly that of Aydin (Haluk Bilginer, below), our "hero," a wealthy man who owns the hotel that lies at the center of the film.

Around this cold sun circle the rest of the characters, including his young wife, Nihal (Melisa Sözen, shown below), and his sister, Necla (Demet Akbag, above, right). There is a scene midway in the movie between sister and brother that is one of the strongest (and longest) sections of dialog I think I've ever heard in a movie, unveiling character, philosophy, desire and fear, batting back and forth like a great tennis match of intellect and hubris that will have you on tenterhooks, trying to take it all in.

A subplot involving tenants of our wealthy fellow, a family quite down on its luck, further unveils the character of Aydin, as well as of the tenant family members themselves. A scene involving money changing hands toward the finale is one of the most quietly explosive and frustrating ever committed to film.

Ceylan's movie probes everything from class and religion to feminism, the male prerogative (in a culture such as Turkey's), and much more. There's even a reference to Hitler and the Jewish Holocaust that might tilt Turkish heads in the direction of their country's own Holocaust against Armenians, the responsibility for which -- unlike the Germans for their own, dreadful piece of history -- Turks have yet to accept. (I would like to think that Ceylan intends this "thought process," though being any more direct about it could probably end his career, at least in his home country.)

If I have given you any sense at all of how rich this movie is -- in so many ways -- then I'll consider this post a success. Winter Sleep has been selected by Turkey as its submission for Best Foreign Language Film. As crowded with quality as this year's selections surely are -- Force Majeure, The Circle, Ida, Rocks in My Pockets and Two Days, One Night (I'll cover that last one next week and haven't yet seen Beloved Sisters, Leviathan or Human Capital) to name but a few -- it strikes me at this point that Ceylan's film outshines all of what I have viewed.

Winter Sleep -- from Adopt Films and running 196 minutes -- opens this Friday, December 19, in New York City exclusively at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angeles on January 23 at Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5. To see all currently scheduled playdates, click here, and then scroll down and click on View Theaters and Showtimes.

Turkey's BFLF entry, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, opens

The first of the year is a notorious time for dumping bad movies on the public (by the major studios, at least). But the first film to open in New York theaters in 2010 -- a little indepen-dent, of course -- proved a comic gem of dark, sparkling humor, A Film With Me in It. Then last year, we got another good (though not great) Romanian movie to start our year, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle. For 2012, however, we may finally have a great one: ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, the latest film from Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan and not coincidentally, that country's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film "Oscar" race.

Up till now, TrustMovies has remained warm-to-luke regarding the work of Mr. Ceylan (pictured at left). The three films I've seen from this sometimes interesting and always visually stunning writer/
director have ranged from the style-heavy/content-light Distant to the better-balanced relationship movie Climates to the problematic and melodramatic Three Monkeys. (After seeing that last film I did wonder if this filmmaker had finally lived up -- well, down -- to his middle name). Now, with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Ceylan appears to have made a quantum leap regarding his storytelling skills while losing nothing of his consummate visual panache.

Once/Anatolia is all about a killing. Unlike, however, something on the level of AMC's recent, pretentious murder-as-entertainment-porn series The Killing, Ceylan's film takes us deep, deep into the personal and societal ramifications of this murder. At two hours and 27 minutes, we've plenty of time to ingest the unhurried pace and breathtaking cinematography, as well as to slowly come to appreciate and understand the many characters on view.

The film begins just post-sunset (see poster image at top) and the first half takes place at night. We're on some kind of investigation involving the search for a particular location, two handcuffed men, several police officers, a doctor (Muhammet Uzuner, above, right), and a chief investigator. There's small talk of yoghurt, then business talk of fields, trees and a hole dug. For buried treasure? A body? Slowly we learn, in the most non-expository, off-handed conversation, of which the below is a fine example:

Are they paying you overtime?

Don't know.  I expect so.

They will. They money's good when it's a corpse. 
Look at Tevfik. He never misses a chance:

 All that overtime, and suddenly there's a second story on his house.

In a few short, very real lines, we learn content (the corpse) and character (a little of Tevfik's, as well as that of the fellow who's speaking). The screenplay, by Ceylan, along with Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal, is full of just this kind of smart writing. Its funniest line (there are a number of darkly humours bits), given what's happening throughout Europe just now, is probably the one in which the inspector reprimands a brutal cop: Is this how we'll get into the European Union?!"

Once/Anatolia is a male movie. It's over an hour before we get even a glimpse of a woman, and she's something to behold (Cansu Demirci, above). However, as a female in the provinces, she's simply there to serve (and maybe be bartered in marriage).

As the journey and the investigation proceed, we learn more about the suspect (Firat Tanis, above), as well as about the chief investigator, well-played by Taner Birsel, whose story of a gorgeous woman who somehow knew she was going to die eventually commands enormous importance.

By the end of this quietly stark movie, its event -- the killing -- has taken on a rare weight and resonance. The film starts small and specific then slowly grows and expands to take in so much: death, family, grief, employment, the place of women, the responsibility to children, the behavior of men. 

With the addition of this film to the already released Pina and A Separation, I would say that the competition for Best Foreign Language Film is certainly heating up. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a Cinema Guild release, opens this coming Wednesday, January 4, in New York City for a two- week run at Film Forum. Click the FF link for showtimes, or here for upcoming playdates, as they appear.