Film
DRAMA/TRAGEDY CLIMATES (15) 101 min 0000
Written and directed by the Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Climates charts the breakdown of a relationship between a middle-aged university professor Isa (played by Ceylan) and his younger girlfriend Bahar (the director's real-life wife Ebru Ceylan). a TV art director. Unfolding over the course of three seasons — summer at an Aegean resort. autumn in rainy Istanbul. and winter in a remote. snow-covered region of Eastern Turkey near Mount Ararat — it‘s a deeply personal work. suffused with melancholy.
‘Ordinary stories of ordinary people'. is how Ceylan has described his cinema. and those who saw the filmmakers superb previous study of alienated masculinity Uzak (Distant) will be familiar with the contemplative.
INTERVIEW
THE CHANGING MAN
pared-down style of Climates. Dialogue
is secondary to the high-definition digital video images and the expressive soundtrack. with aural motifs such as dogs barking connecting all three sections of the film.
Ceylan focuses on his characters faces and gestures and on the silences in their interactions. thus allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks of the slender story. Shot in a continuous take. a rough sex scene between Isa and a former partner. Serap (Nasan Kesal). in which the man forces the female into
Nuri Bilge Ceylan the great Turkish filmmaker of Uzak and now Climates speaks about marital discord and the movies
‘I was on holiday with my wife Ebru, and we were discussing ideas over lunch for a film about a marriage. We went to the beach and did some test shots with ourselves playing the parts of a husband and wife. I liked our performances so much in these tests that I decided that we should take the lead roles, and I went away and wrote the Climates
script for the two of us.
‘Ebru didn’t need much persuading to be in the film. She knows the kind of minimalist acting that I prefer. I’d tell her the general guidelines - “Don’t act big, keep things small!” - and that was enough for her. People in Turkey were surprised that I wanted to direct and act at the same time, but I thought “why not?” And I decided that I would act the
part of Isa by relying on my' intuition.
‘Climates is the first film on which I’ve used a director of photography, because I usually operate the camera myself. Now I think it’s better to work with a cinematographer, because as the director I can use the monitor to concentrate on the acting and the framing. And this was also the first time that I’d used digital video. I really like the sharpness of the images you can get from high-definition cameras. Celluloid is like vinyl: after several showings there are already scratches. You can try out far more things on digital, and the editing is more creative. I shot seven times more footage for Climates than I did for my last feature Uzak.
‘With Isa, I wanted to show the weak side of man. To me, though, women are more stable emotionally and more content than men. In my films the landscapes connect the characters to a sense of something cosmic. I try to recapture those moments in life where you suddenly feel that connection to a wider universe. Sound too is very important to the way I create a particular atmosphere, more so than music. The sound, for instance, of dogs barking in the distance at night creates lots of feelings for the viewer. Of course our ears are very selective - we don’t hear everything. That’s why in the post-production process I add
whatever I want to the sound mix.’
(Interview by Tom Dawson)
I Climates is at GFT, Glasgow on Thu 75 Mar only; Filmhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 23—Thu 29 Mar. See review, above.
44 THE LIST 15—29 Mar 2007
submission. is both disconcerting and farcically amusing. Elsewhere. a beach sequence of Ebru daydreaming that she is being buried alive crystallises her anxieties regarding herself and Isa. Meanwhile Ceylan's droll humour is evident here in an amusing running gag about Isa's neck-ache.
The emotional estrangement between the central couple is conveyed through impressiver precise compositions. their states-of-mind symbolised by the surrounding landscapes and changing weather conditions. And Ceylan's understated central performance is no flattering self-portrait: his Isa may have a wry charm. but he‘s also self-pitying. patronising. and emotionally cruel. Recommended. (Tom Dawson)
I GET. Glasgow on Thu 75 Mar only. Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 23— Thu 29 Mar only. See interview. below.
THRILLER TRUE STORY CATCH A FIRE (12A) 101 min 000
Just a decade before South African State President FW de Klerk un- banned the ANC and other anti- apartheid organisations. and announced that Mandela would shortly be released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl on I 1 February 1990. many people were suffering in the name of equal rights. One such man was Patrick Chamusso (beautifully played here by Derek Luke). the son of migrant workers who had become a middle ranking employee in the country's medieval mineral mines. Bad luck and harassment from racist police detective Nick Vos (Tim Robbins) drove Chamusso to travel to Angola and train up under Joe Slovo's ANC rebels (exactly what Vos had originally accused him of being when he was in fact totally innocent). A game of cat and mouse ensues between these two protagonists as Chamusso prepares an act of terrorism on the huge Sasol oil refinery at Secunda.
Directed by the always dependable Australian filmmaker Philip Noyce (Rabbit Proof Fence. The Quiet American) and written by Joe Slovo's daughter. Shawn Slovo. Catch a Fire certainly has a fine pedigree. Working on the basis that any reasonably intelligent viewer will pick up on the analogy between the current state of emergency evoked by allied forces in Iraq. Afghanistan and on the homefront. and the paranoia of South Africa's then white ruling minority. the film proves a worthy. occasionally compelling dramatic thriller. Good performances all round are slightly undermined by Slovo's simplistic. schematic screenplay. but this is certainly one film with its heart in the right place. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri 23 Mar.
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