WINTER SLEEP:CURLS OF OXIMORONS BY PRADIP BISWAS JURY MEMBER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF INDIA, FRIBOURG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, FIFF, SWISS CURATOR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS “I would say that my films are trying to show the dark side of human nature,” Nuri B. Ceylan Nuri Bilge NURI BILGE CEYLAN With the second Grand Prix Nuri Bilge Ceylan seems to have gone somewhat bonkers as he dares saying: “I don’t care about boring the audience. Sometimes, I really want to bore them because out of boredom might come a miracle, maybe days later, maybe years, when they see the film again.” Yes this is Nuri B. Ceylan whose formative films, whatever their purposes and aims, never manifested such fads at least on the kinetic movement of cinema. Those of us who have seen Nuri’s films in group or separately, could seldom surmise that one day after 2nd Grand Prix winner, he could openly and to some extent bluntly utter a dictum that is subject to scrutiny of the specialists. Turkish filmmaker Nuri Blige Ceylan is said to be an undeniably a world-class filmmaker, but he does not, as they say, crush it every time up. His antilogy may make him an object of ridicule and purgation, Nuri Ceylan does not twig. Maybe, it is his childish outburst which vanishes above firmament in two ticks. It’s not a tagline you’ll see on the poster of his extraordinary new film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – Boring now, fascinating later. Interestingly, some critics think the 53-year-old Ceylan’s poetic, enquiring work challenges audiences to think more deeply than most. He realizes: “I know that audiences are used to faster and shorter movies.” Yet he intentionally prolongs the pace and length of the film to 158 minutes duration , that follows a dozen men hunt for a body with an agenda of a murder suspect over one night in rural Turkey. When the film was first screened in Cannes last year, a plot development occurring at the 90-minute mark was greeted by cheers. Until then, Ceylan asks that we settle into the rhythm of the investigation as men sink in small talk about sick-hurt and prostate cancer. Like his last film, Three Monkeys (2008), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is less autobiographical than his first four features. This is perception of the often emotive director. His first film, Kasaba’(1998), is a child’s-eye portrait of agrarian life; in Clouds of May (1999) a filmmaker grapples with the ethics of his work; Uzak (2002) narrates a tale of a lonely photographer in Istanbul; and Climates (2006) features Ceylan and his wife as a metropolitan couple, caught in urban dilemma. It is said Ceylan’s childhood was spent between Istanbul and a small town in provincial north-west Turkey. He came to London in the mid- ’80s – before his military service – where, he told in an earlier interview, he spent hours at the NFT and stole camera film from a chemist in Brixton. It was in the early ’90s that Ceylan shot his first short, Koza (1995), which was selected for Cannes. Next year the French festival was kind to him to take his film into competition section and last May he won the Grand Prix a second time with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’, jointly with Belgium’s Dardenne brothers. As said the film is an existential murder mystery based on an actual killing two decades ago. But its interests are very much Ceylan’s own: his focus is on the hierarchies of power in everyday relations, the meaning of life and death, gallows of humour and the passing of time along with the tensions between the city and country. Lest the film buffs are bewildered he remarks: “I would say that my films are trying to understand the dark side of human nature.” . We need to know that Ceylan’s childhood was split between Istanbul and a small town in provincial north-west Turkey. He came to London in the mid- ’80s – before his military service – where, he told in an earlier interview, he spent hours at the NFT and stole camera film from a chemist in Brixton. It was in the early ’90s that Ceylan shot his first short, Koza (1995), which was selected for Cannes. The French festival has been kind to him and last May he won the Grand Prix a second time with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (jointly with Belgium’s Dardenne brothers). The film is an existential murder mystery based on an actual killing two decades ago. But its interests are very much Ceylan’s own: the hierarchies of power in everyday relations; the meaning of life and death; gallows-humour; the passing of time (and passing the time); tensions between the city and country. Said he: “I would say that my films are trying to understand the dark side of human nature.” It is said Nuri Bilge Ceylan tends to decode Winter Sleep, and explain his Patent theatrical inspirations and his vision of the role of the filmmaker through such a film. If we agree or not, this is his vision and firm perception. Incidentally, joined by his trio of actors, Aluk Bilginer, Melisa Sözen and Demet Akbag, Nuri Bilge Ceylan has talked to the world’s press to decode his remarkable Winter Sleep , unfolded in the main competition at the 67th Cannes Film Festival and lo! it would go on to win the Palme dOr one week later in 2014. Winter Sleep is based on plenty of dialogue unlike his previous films. It is perhaps deliberate or madness. Nuri Bilge Ceylan says he likes dialogue very much, and incidentally, there has been plenty of it in his feature debut, Kasaba made long time ago. But as they didn’t do live sound recordings, they had some problems, and ever since then, he has been a bit afraid of thick dialogue. What is interesting is that he also really likes theatre. Not only did he use a lot of dialogue this time around, but it’s quite literary as well. Says he: “This kind of language is very widely used both at the theatre and in literature, but it’s fairly risky to use it in cinema, and it may very well not work. In my early films, I was very careful to do natural and realistic things, but I realised that’s done a lot today in films and even in TV adverts, in which street language is used quite often.” Nuri Bilge Ceylan So because of that, he has decided to shift towards a more literary type of dialogue, and to see whether Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky could work on the silver screen, if offered a chance. This is a hypothesis no doubt. Nevertheless, as the dialogue is fairly laborious, Nuri has needed professional actors because non-professionals would have had trouble delivering the lines in chattering tone. It is found many themes, from marital relations, through politics, to social issues currently taking place in Turkey find space in his film. In his film, he makes no reference to the current situation in Turkey. Probably as a ploy he avoids not to stir wasps’ nest. Incidentally, he does not think a director should allude to current events in his or her country, because he or she has a duty to examine things on a broader level. But everything that happens, wherever it is in the world, can be explained by reflecting on human nature. It is his belief that a filmmaker’s duty is different to that of a journalist. But why he does not expound. Of course, he or she can do the work of a journalist, but more than this, he believes that he or she must speak to the viewer’s soul, try to inject some emotions into them. If the audience learns to feel a little ashamed of certain things, that already means that the film has succeeded in a way. “Trying to understand the human soul is what motivates me to make films”, says While talking about Nuri B.Ceylan and his extraordinary spot for the shoot, he has a lot to manifest to his followers. And what he reveals is quite interesting and quaint. For example, initially he didnt want to shoot in that place, but I didnt have any choice either. This is the result of his research. Says he: “I wanted a simple location, but also a touristic one. And yet, in Cappadocia, that was the only place where we could still find tourists in winter.” Besides, it also needed to be a location away from the big cities – so that was the only place he had to choose. It may be noted he was a little afraid about shooting in Cappadocia because its a region of immense beauty, more than he could have wished for. In fact, he did not want to show the terrain beauty too much because it might mar the intent of the film. But yet he filmed the first snowfall in order to symbolize the change in atmosphere because a little bit of white was good for our mental well-being. It was cold, sometimes -10°, and the crew and Ceylan were really freezing. It is a sort of frozen zone and nothing seems to work out. But finally it didnt snow enough and they had to shoot the snow scenes very quickly, in a rush. Golden Palm On the starting point for the film, we come to know that it is based on three short stories by Chekhov, and they inspired some of the dialogue. We come across similar situations in our day-to-day life, and Nuri gets the impression that this story was written for Turkey. A human being is still a human being wherever you go, but he cant say that he has made a film on a particular, specific and clear subject. What he likes doing is making ambiguous films that end up leaving you with mixed emotions. It is narrated that people sometimes ask him how he would sum up his films in one word or one sentence, and he cant manage it! On characters who embody a pessimistic view of existence, the director has a different take. There is just as much hope in his characters as there is in life itself. Some directors like to introduce an optimistic note at the end of their films, but Nuri does not. That he is fairly realistic, and sometimes, he trusts, you have to know how to be a pessimist. Nonetheless, he even thought that the end of the film was a bit too optimistic, and during the edit he made Aydin’s speech a little more confused so that the character’s burden could also be shouldered by his wife a little bit. In the film, he avoids the fact that they can make out straight away what people are saying, and in the end, Aydin could very well say these words in order to relieve himself, without being honest, so Nuri clouded the issue. It is intentional and artistic as well as elliptical. The striking look of the director’s film has developed over time. He has always sought for meaning in landscapes or cityscapes – think of the ship in the snow in Uzak. But his visual style became more heightened in Three Monkeys: a film about a family dragged into political scandal and corrupt social practice. the plot was reflected in stormy skies across the Bosphorus. And this time he wanted to be more realistic. The light and colours of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia may move to the real, but the film’s compositions and lighting are as precise as ever, especially in the mysterious night-time scenes. Over half the film takes place in the dark, and Ceylan works wonders with the glare of headlights and torches. This is his cinematic improvisation. A flash of lightning offers a moment of horror as the sky lights up an ancient carving of a face. A scene in a village as the men drink tea in the dead of night takes on a spiritual edge when a beautiful young woman serves the suspect by lamplight: then a haunting moment that navigates the story in a different direction. This girl is a catalyst, Ceylan offers. In fact, they were searching for a reason why this suspect would confess or come into apocalypse. An innocent girl could be a reason for the change in his soul. When probed, we can observe it’s the first of two such epiphanies in the film. As night becomes day, Ceylan narrows his focus to a doctor, a rational man we see in conversation with a prosecutor who believes in the more spiritual side of life. Ultimately there’s a sense that events awaken something within the doctor too. Perhaps it’s here that the film finally feels autobiographical. The doctor, called a ‘city boy’ by a policeman, feels like one of the conflicted men, torn between the rational and emotional, like that of Ceylan’s earlier films. In short, it is said he feels like Ceylan himself. The real story was told to me by a doctor, Ceylan says. But it is manifested the doctor in the film is a little like him, trapped in a conflict, in terms of personality. He is a very rational person, but of course that is not enough to deal with life. Life has a metaphysical dimension too. There are questions that you cannot answer with knowledge. The doctor has these questions in his mind. The important thing is that, by the end of the film, we see that he has the ability to feel something for somebody else. That’s the hope for him. Winter Sleep On the screen-writing process, Nuri Ceylan cogitates a lot and then holds his pen. It is acknowledged that the screenwriting process has changed a lot during his film life. The digesis has it that as he began to feel half-confident film-by-film, he became braver in going into more complex methods and problems. His films thus have become more complex, and for that he needs a better script, a more detailed script. That doesn’t mean that he does not change them during shooting. Scriptwriting for him is a never-ending process until he chucks up editing, even sound design, because even there one can still change dialogue. But he tries now to write in as much detail as possible in order to feel safer in the shooting sequence. As the story goes he first shoos what he wrote, and then begins to think again and try many new things. He is always “writing” when he watches the scene as he shoots it. Apart from it, he aims to make it even more detailed, because if there are variations in the shooting, the possibilities of what you can do in the editing increases exponentially. Like in chess, you can bring together many different things during the editing. For his filmmaking, editing is writing, an important process, and not a mechanical thing like in Ozu. He says he likes Ozu very much, but his editing is easier. He used to shoot what he wrote, and nothing changed in the shooting or the editing. Nuri’s filmmaking is not like that. He always strives to find something better, something more real, some thing more topical. When you write a script he thinks you have a tendency to be a bit didactic, but in shooting your brain works in a different way. He says, you see something, and maybe you feel there is something wrong. If you feel that, you have to find something. Even if you cannot find anything, you have to try. Sometimes the opposite of your intention works better. You feel it in the shooting. At the same time on variations during the shooting and changing formal structures, Ceylan plays his brain-wave to ensure the fortification of the his work. In this connection, the director says for actors it is not easy to understand what’s going on. They are lost a little bit in his hidden way of shooting. So he tells them something and they do it, but they really don’t understand why, because from their point of view it is difficult to see. Sometimes, of course, they are very helpful, and if the actors are brave enough and if their intuitions are strong they can sometimes create marvels. When he finishes everything in the shooting, often he sometimes permits them to improvise if he could see potential in them. With some actors there may be something surprising, but he give them push to improvise only after Ceylan gets everything he wants. One thing he avors very much. Hollywood’s stereotype is hated by him. “The problem with Hollywood, says Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is the audience expects to get the answers like a pill. They expect to know not just whodunnit, but the motives of the characters, the how and why. Real life is not like that. Even our closest friend – we dont know what he really thinks. In films we want more than in real life, everything being made clear. That means this kind of cinema is a lie. I cannot make cinema that way. In the film Winter Sleep on functions of the editing process Ceylan’s device is something new and sharply cutting. He feels, yes, everything can change. You delete dialogue sometimes, or change it. Editing is the only place where you can be sure, and you have to be sure there. In shooting, there is always a time constraint and you are often left unsure. There may be something wrong in that scene, and so on; in editing he is in particular strict martinet and you can see everything. You add sounds and try many things and you see the balance. You are alone and you have time. At least he executes editing, because nobody pushes him that on this date you have to go into cinemas, and so on. So in a way, Ceylan makes no compromise on editing table. For this film it was six months, because I shot 200 hours of material. He had to work very hard to finish it in six months. In terms of structure basically the same principle works as in the script. The structure is the same, but there were many more scenes that he took out of the film. The structure doesn’t change much now, because he is writing more detailed scripts, but in his earlier films the structure changed a lot because the script was loose. In this regard, he admits he hasn’t worked with many people other than his wife. If they don’t have a very strong personality, it’s difficult because they accept whatever he nods. They should force him somehow. Ebru, because of our relationship, knows him better. She insists and she fights. She never gives up, and of course she’s very good. And she’s a very realistic person, which Nuri thinks is important. Maybe even more realistic than him.On working together No! It’s impossible to work together. We never like the same thing at the same time. Since it’s my film, if she doesn’t accept something and if he tends to insist, the last decision is Nuri’s. And she’s still talking to me even after it’s finished: “this was wrong and this was wrong.” On influences of several Chekhov stories being the inspiration for this film, Ceylan says: “I like Bergman very much, but I think this scene isn’t much like that one. When we see family members eating each other, all of us remember Bergman, of course. He’s the master of this. That sister relationship is based on the Chekhov story “Excellent People.” Consequently, they have extended it and written many new dialogues, but this sister and brother conflict comes from that story. It’s not similar, because in Winter Light there is a humiliation. He humiliates the woman, and she accepts it, doesn’t fight against it. Here, there is no humiliation, everyone is trying to protect themselves. If there is humiliation, it is the sister who humiliates more. On disappearing of the (she) character, Nuri has to say actually, just before she disappears, he goes to her room. She doesn’t answer, but they feel that she’s there. After that he (Aydin) leaves the house and since they just follow Aydın for the rest of the film, they really don’t see the sister again. There were more scenes with the sister, actually but out of immediacy he took them out in the editing. Glenn Kenny, the scholar critic, remarks:”On its surface, Winter Sleep seems to partake, if not indulge, a familiar European art-film staple, placing a male protagonist in various forms of isolation/alienation from relatives and friends as he and they discuss burning issues of philosophy and emotion. Ceylan invokes/evokes Chekhov in his scenario: protagonist Aydin, an aging former theatrical actor, runs a hotel in a picturesque section of Anatolia and desultorily deals with surly tenants on some land he owns, a disenchanted (and much younger) wife, a watchful sister, and various others, revealing the discontents at the roots of all their relationship and a deep dissatisfaction with life itself, despite the prestige and autonomy and leisure that Aydin enjoys.” I want to share with Glenn Kenny that “the strength of Winter Sleep is not so much in what any of the characters say as much as what it needs its near-monumental length to actually show: which is the way the most seemingly banal circumstances can throw you into a dark night of the soul before you even know what’s going on, a state of wide-awake despair so calamitous one has no choice but to make a companion of it.” That sounds like a paradoxical state—and it is, a painfully paradoxical one, but it’s a real one, and the signal accomplishment of Winter Sleep is that Ceylan’s empathy and technical felicity make it palpable in the artistic realm. It’s a daunting achievement and in a strange way also a comfort in the midst of curls of oximorons. END
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 07:25:27 +0000
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