the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Have liked everything I've seen by this guy, six features and a short. Prefer Winter Sleep and its Chekhovian dialogue/dilemmas to the policier variation Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Anyway:

Ceylan might be our century’s great auteur, forging ahead with his own thing while also befitting comparisons to the arthouse powerhouses of yore. More than any other filmmaker today, he seems closer to taking the medium to another level—to something that is literary as well as cinematic, that is poetic as well as theatrical, to something that isn’t merely concerned with being “pure cinema” or other some pseudo-radical medium by which to conduct aphoristic half-thoughts to the enlightened few who get it. No, Ceylan’s films are commercial in the best possible sense, and at no point in his developing oeuvre have I felt he’s settled into a status quo. That’s an achievement.

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/gestures-nuri-bilge-ceylan

So far only seen Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, which I really liked. Keep meaning to see some more.

well Winter Sleep is still running, all 196 mins of it... be warned the Lincoln Plaza starts on time

Thanks, but. Have a tough time getting to see three hour movies these days, although I did manage to see Leviathan over the holidays.

Sorry for early -temporary I hope -derail, but I saw a bunch of stuff in 2012 by another Turkish guy who was working slightly different territory that was very good. And his name is ... Zeki Demirkubuz .

Interesting. If you search for his and Ceylan's name pretty much all hits in Turkish.

I own a copy of Climates, but I can't seem to locate it right now.

In other words, I got nothing.

Oh good, nice that this thread was started. Saw Winter Sleep the other day (after my gf and I were scolded by a terrible woman for buying bags of popcorn as she 'came to this cinema because nobody eats popcorn here, also it's a very quiet film' - we didn't eat the popcorn but did devise numerous rhetorical comebacks for if we bumped into her afterwards) - it's simply one of the best films I've seen in a cinema, possibly one of the best of the last decade or two full stop. Enormous, beautiful, exquisitely ambiguous, sympathetic to every character, and MAYBE SPOILER one of the few recent adult films I can think of without either explicit sexual reference or human death - not that this is in itself a positive quality, but it demonstrates the tremendous narrative weight the film derives merely from conversation, from argument, from the characters' various guilts and their various projections. The film's arguments are superlative - some of the best arguments ever devised for the medium, and lots of them too - they're allowed to play out fully, as well - no short-cuts or sacrificing of nuance for pointed brevity. And the main set! Oh! Otherworldly! The Anatolian tourist board presumably part-funded this film, because it makes their land seem like one of the weirdest and most remote places on earth - it's utterly gorgeous, melting into or out of rock, full of strange landforms and warm, fire-filled interiors. The night shots of the protagonist and his horse were especially amazing.

A word too for this movie's treatment of female characters - unlike most dramas with a male protagonist, it gives its female leads not only an enormous chunk of the floor-time but it allows them a really very good go at defeating (or at least skewering) that protagonist in argument - Necla especially is maybe even more complex and compelling than he is (although it makes sense she drops out of the action when she does, having said her piece to both Nihal and Aydin and finding both incapable of fully understanding her). This director is clearly one with a laudable progressivist agenda and a smart social conscience - see also his respectful treatment of class differences and gleeful savagery when contemplating bourgie liberal guilt.

It's also a really very funny film indeed. The bloody West London arts cinema we went to was all silent and self-possessed but I wanted to chuckle aloud so many times.

Ceylan might be our century’s great auteur, forging ahead with his own thing while also befitting comparisons to the arthouse powerhouses of yore. More than any other filmmaker today, he seems closer to taking the medium to another level—to something that is literary as well as cinematic, that is poetic as well as theatrical, to something that isn’t merely concerned with being “pure cinema” or other some pseudo-radical medium by which to conduct aphoristic half-thoughts to the enlightened few who get it. No, Ceylan’s films are commercial in the best possible sense, and at no point in his developing oeuvre have I felt he’s settled into a status quo. That’s an achievement.

that is dreadful writing

the way in which its ostensibly narrow focus gives way to a powerful, complex drama riddled with social and interpersonal frissons is as enthralling as that ought to sound

u saw it too?

do you not think that is sententious dogshit

Michael Pattison
@m_pattison

An urbicolous, ultracrepidarian macroverbumsciolist fond of flexiloquence.
Gateshead, England

any sentence that begins 'More than any other filmmaker today', continues with 'to another level' and ends by invoking the enlightened strawfew who 'get it' while dismissing abstract cinema wholesale is pretty sententious yes

'that's an achievement' obv the 'this is just how i feel' of the piece

also hahaha

This was Ceylan's top ten list for the Sight and Sound poll:

Andrei Rublev 1966 Andrei Tarkovsky
Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 Robert Bresson
L'Avventura 1960 Michelangelo Antonioni
L'Eclisse 1962 Michelangelo Antonioni
Late Spring 1949 Ozu Yasujirô
A Man Escaped 1956 Robert Bresson
Mirror 1974 Andrei Tarkovsky
Scenes from a Marriage 1995 Ingmar Bergman
Shame 1968 Ingmar Bergman
Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô

Just from seeing his films, you would prob guess that he aspires to be in that kind of company, and to some extent he has satisfied a critical need for 'our century's great auteur'. But Uzak, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep are undeniably very great films - and as Imago suggests, there's a quiet strain of absurdist humour in his films that helps to undercut (or maybe it completes?) his high seriousness. Uzak has the greatest Tarkovsky gag ever.

Huluk Bilginer's performance in Winter Sleep was probably the finest I saw last year, and it does my head in that he was also Mehmet in Eastenders.

uzak is isn't a very great film if that is understood with respect to tarkovsky and antonioni, upon a time in anatolia is exquisite and far more developed

to some extent he has satisfied a critical need for 'our century's great auteur' = this god in the mountains nostalgism inhibits understanding of the specificity of what he is doing

is

have seen & loved movies by 3 of those directors but none of those listed - all worth it i trust

Huluk Bilginer's performance in Winter Sleep was probably the finest I saw last year, and it does my head in that he was also Mehmet in Eastenders. = lol, i shall look forward to the 1080p of this all the more so in the knowledge that it features the colin 'kazim kazim' kazim-richards of cinema

(after my gf and I were scolded by a terrible woman for buying bags of popcorn as she 'came to this cinema because nobody eats popcorn here, also it's a very quiet film' - we didn't eat the popcorn but did devise numerous rhetorical comebacks for if we bumped into her afterwards)

Terrible woman otm.

Anyway, it was a good bit of timing to see Winter Sleep a week or so after catching a performance of The Cherry Orchard.

nostalgism inhibits understanding of the specificity of what he is doing

What would that be then?

Prefer Once Upon a Time... although my fave is possibly Climates but I wonder whether he just is forcing it a bit much overall (I mean that list). Been around the block w/this stuff, not sure whether he is saying anything too 'new'.

have seen & loved movies by 3 of those directors but none of those listed - all worth it i trust

― imago, Monday, 5 January 2015 09:53 (41 minutes ago)

lol what do you think
not watched any bergman films but the other eight there are so obviously great that someone listing them among their favourite films seems almost to be taking the piss out the list format

Greath thread. I wrote this thing on Once Upon a Time in Anotolia a few months back, in case anyone is interested: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/10/once-upon-time-in-anatolia-nuri-bilge.html

I'm trying to make up my mind on Winter Sleep. I need to watch it again, under better circumstances, I think. Found out I could make a screening after work one day, was at cinema 25 minutes in advance, ended up getting third-to-last ticket, second row, right. Not a good seat. But impressive that a 196 min turkish film sold out in Copenhagen, so that was cool.

I was pretty surprised at how this film looked, compared to ...Anatolia, and Three Monkeys as well. It looked like much cheaper digital, much less surface-prettyness. Once those long discussions started to circle in on themselves it reminded me of a giant version of Hong Sang-soo, slightly. But then it developed into something far different. I thought the two parallel discussions in the final act, with Ismail and the teacher, were absolutely brilliant. They seemed to answer the problems that Aydin, Necla and Nihal were circling around, but could never be honest enough to answer themselves. More to follow, once I get my mind around it.

Winter Asleep is very good, but not as great as Anatolia:
too much emphasis on dialog, less on image.

though it does sum up his philosophy in a straight forward manner i'd say.

If the dialogue says more than the image, that is not nec crucial.

I think the imagery is eloquent important in WS; it's not like the landscape, and the hotel and dwellings built into rock, are irrelevant to the themes.

(thought the biggest plot misstep in the climax was the fireplace thing, which one could see coming for 5 minutes)

oh they could have cut from her knocking at the door to money in a fireplace; whole thing was utterly telegraphed; think that was the point though - we had to see it all unfold from her perspective even though it was screamingly obvious what she'd come to do and what would happen - like I said, gleeful savagery upon bourgie guilt (with a dram of sympathy)

um, MAYBE SPOILER but not rly

Andrei Rublev 1966 Andrei Tarkovsky
Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 Robert Bresson
L'Avventura 1960 Michelangelo Antonioni
L'Eclisse 1962 Michelangelo Antonioni
Late Spring 1949 Ozu Yasujirô
A Man Escaped 1956 Robert Bresson
Mirror 1974 Andrei Tarkovsky
Scenes from a Marriage 1995 Ingmar Bergman
Shame 1968 Ingmar Bergman
Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô

Very symmetrical.

I haven't seen Winter Sleep yet, but man, Film Comment was not kind to it a few issues back.

which critic?

Think it was their editor-in-chief, or Taubin maybe.

FC put Interstellar on the cover, y'know. With TWO full-length critical appreciations.

The imagery in Winter Sleep seems incredibly important, I think. It's clearly carefully made. I just think the connection between style and theme is more oblique than it used to be. Which is cool, just means I have to think about it...

"If the dialogue says more than the image, that is not nec crucial."

i disagree. cause it's cinema.

Dreyer, for example, combined imagery within dialog, to perfection.
Winter Sleep, i think, is more or less dialog OR image, usually not together, and that's fine as long as you don't have too much dialog..

You must love Eric Rohmer.

Didn't have a problem w/ the long dialogue scenes in WS - it's a film about an actor, the conversations are another performance, the firelit rooms a stage (and as Rivette makes clear, there is in fact a deep relationship between cinema and theatre). It seemed quite brave - or bloody-minded - of Ceylan to retreat into the interior after roaming the countryside in his previous film, and I thought the film really pulled off that sense of passions/feelings shutting down, hibernating.

i do actually. but more Green Ray and less Maude..
xpost

well exactly; just because there's a lot of dialogue doesn't mean the visuals are null.

WPT, despite the lengthy dialouges, is a superb piece of filmmaking. Excellent movie.

You should get this Blu-ray of THE WILD PEAR TREE not for my essay but because it has A SIX AND A HALF HOUR MAKING OF DOCUMENTARY on it. (Also, the movie's great. ) https://t.co/yG4rIvIWgZ

— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) October 17, 2019

So want to watch that making of. Also, the film is extremely good.

Yeah feels like it was slept on a bit?

I very much liked The Wild Pear Tree. It certainly didn't stint on the alienation, and alienating qualities, of its protagonist. Novelistic in the better sense, tho I see complaints about the length of his films are increasing in some quarters.

Need to see that. Maybe even today, if we're considering it eligible for the poll again. If I loved the previous two but slightly preferred Winter Sleep...does this continue along that path, or diverge intriguingly?

someone my age no longer remembers films I saw 3+ years ago well. :/ But it's recognizably occupied with his concerns etc.

opened in the US January 2019

ah nice ok ty! it's on the pile

Funnily enough, it's been in my Netflix queue for months, suddenly becoming available yesterday.