About Dry Grasses
The latest Anatolian drama from Nuri Bilge Ceylan is challenging but welcome, reminding us that cinema is an art form capable of delivering deeply serious work.
Image courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.
Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the very few living filmmakers who invites comparison with the great Ingmar Bergman. Both men can be seen as serious artists who found in film the best way to express themselves and whose work is directly expressive of what they themselves wished to say always carried out without any compromise over commercial considerations. It's not surprising therefore that Ceylan’s films are often challenging and that is again true of his latest, About Dry Grasses, which, while certainly less than perfect, stands witness to his special qualities. Indeed, it takes real skill to make a film lasting 197 minutes that engages the interest of the viewer throughout and Ceylan obtains excellent performances from his cast who are wholly persuasive.
While Bergman's work was at its finest when drawing on his Swedish heritage, Anatolia is even more central to Ceylan's films and it remains so here. He tells a story largely set in Incesu, a rural community in Eastern Turkey where Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), an art teacher, has reached his fourth year in this unwelcome mandatory posting and is hopeful of at last being able to move to Istanbul. Meanwhile, he has a room-mate in a fellow bachelor named Kenan (Musab Ekici) who, being a local man, is more content with his situation and has worked in the same school for seven years. However, things go off course when both men get into trouble and are summoned before the Director of Education. This is done not to offer them promotion as they hope but to reveal that complaints have been made about their behaviour with students. Exactly what the accusation is they are not told, nor the identity of the complainant, but they do receive a warning. That is thought to suffice since, however inappropriate the behaviour in question was said to be, it happened not in private but in the classroom. It seems likely therefore that no serious offence has taken place but Samet has unwisely shown favouritism to a 14-year-old student named Sevim (Ece Bagci) and taken a special interest in her. Samet believes her to be the one responsible because, as we have already seen, there has been sudden tension between them after a class search of pupils’ belongings has revealed a love letter composed by Sevim which appears to be addressed to Samet. He has taken possession of it and subsequently lies to Sevim when claiming that he has torn it up. But the girl does not believe him and the formal accusation made could well be her retaliation.
Describe About Dry Grasses in these terms and it sounds to be something of a companion piece to the impressive German drama The Teachers’ Lounge released earlier this year. There too the focus is on a teacher and on how tensions between staff and students get out of hand, but even so the two works contain major differences. In The Teachers’ Lounge the drama moves at a pace (it’s a standard length feature), the teacher is a female and idealistic even if her actions have unintended consequences and the piece is wide-ranging only in the sense that the behaviour and attitudes in the school strikingly illustrate so much that is to be seen in society today - and not just in Germany. Ceylan, however, has given us a film that is more literally wide-ranging since it moves away from the school to study human frailty and the way in which people act (as one line of dialogue puts it: "Everybody is out to screw each other “). In particular we are invited to follow what happens when another teacher, Nuray (Merve Dizdar), who works in the nearest town, is introduced to Samet who in turn introduces her to Kenan. Nuray had previously been in the military and lost a leg due to the actions of a suicide bomber, but she has adjusted to her new life and is an intelligent woman with left-wing attitudes. Samet finds her interesting company at least but, liking to think of himself as a superior person, he becomes jealous when Nuray appears to find the less cultured Kenan more appealing. In consequence of that Samet sets out to seduce her himself.
In keeping with other films by Ceylan these fresh aspects invite us to study human nature, the lies we tell, the images of ourselves that we project and the motivations that we may hide even from ourselves. Ceylan, who is always involved in the screenplay of his films, is acutely aware of human weakness but seeks to understand it rather than merely to condemn it. That is why in this instance Samet is allowed to be the key character even though in a world in which bad behaviour is widespread he is the one most guilty of it. While the film is sufficiently open to allow for different interpretations, there is a particularly insightful scene in which a long conversation finds Nuray analysing Samet perceptively. Drawn-out scenes of discussion are, of course, a feature of Ceylan’s work and at times risk becoming an unwelcome mannerism (that happens here early on when a group conversation gets in the way of our need to decipher who is who on the school staff) but the Nuray/Samet example is one of Ceylan’'s best ever and must have played a part in obtaining awards for Merve Dizdar’s fine performance.
There is always something here to hold our attention, but for all the film’s merits its sense of structure leaves something to be desired. The school story seems so much of the essence that it feels bizarre when it appears to drop out and be replaced by the triangular drama - despite which the student Sevim (a remarkable supporting performance by Ece Bagci) returns late on because the film closes at the end of the school term. There are also times when the film tends to mystify. There are a few extra subsidiary characters whose roles are rather vague (Turkish audiences may find a clearer relevance here), one sequence unexpectedly includes footage set up to remind you that what you are watching is a film with actors and a brief late switch from the film’s winter light into the green landscape of summer leads into a finale in which Samet turns philosophical about youthful commitment and its virtually inevitable loss – but as presented this feels pretentious rather than profound and is less persuasive than the film’s portrayal of how perpetually trying to live in hope can lead to weariness. However, if elements of About Dry Grasses are open to question, it remains a rare privilege to be offered a film so ambitious, so well acted and so patently personal, a work that could only have been made by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Original title: Kuru Otter Üstüne.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Deniz Celiloğlu. Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, Ece Bagci, Elit Andaç Çam, Erdem Senocak, Yüksel Aksu, Onur Berk Arslanoǧlu, Nalan Kuruçim, Birsen Sürme, Seçkin Aydin, Eylem Canpolat, Elif Ürse.
Dir Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Pro Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Screenplay Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ph Cevahir Sahin and Kürsat Üresin, Pro Des Meral Aktan, Ed Oguz Atabas and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Music Philip Timofeyev, Costumes Gülsah Yüksel.
NBC Film/Memento Films Production/Komplitzen Film/Second Land/Film i Väst/Arte France Cinema/Playtime-Picturehouse Entertainment.
198 mins. Turkey/France/Germany/Sweden/Qatar. 2023. US Rel: 23 February 2024. UK Rel: 26 July 2024. Cert. 15.
