Distant (2002) (Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This movie inspired my first review on Letterboxd. Three years later, I can't relate to it as seamlessly as I once did. Despite that, I still feet the weight of it. It puts me back in touch the loneliness I once experienced. It renews my will to rail against that part of myself.
Mahmut and Yusuf both cope with similar problems stemming from opposing circumstances. Everything Mahmut wants is within reach yet he pushes it away to spite himself. His family, his art, and the love of his life are all at his finger tips, yet he'd rather withdraw into himself and watch them pass him by. His plight is existential.
Yusuf, on the other hand, can only see the life he wants from afar. He can't care for his family without a job. He can't get a job in the recession. The women he casts wanting gazes at are headed elsewhere. The optimism he arrives in Istanbul with is slowly ground down to abject fatalism.
The third most present character in this story is a mouse. Like Yusuf, he is an unwanted house guest. He leaves messes for Mahmut to clean up. He's increasingly unwelcome, but won't leave. When caught, Mahmut suggests letting the mouse suffer on the glue trap until morning. The task falls to Yusuf to dispose of the doomed creature in a grocery bag. He tosses the bag to the street where cats flock to it hungrily. Mahmut watches on as Yusuf retrieves the bag and mercifully swings it against a wall. It's an act of courtesy and empathy Yusuf certainly wouldn't and couldn't extend.
The final sequences of the film aren't any less haunting the second time around. The airport scene is a painful undermining of a classic trope. The cigarette, the stare, and the sound of the waves are a brutal valediction. Kenneth Lonnergan's Manchester by the Sea closes with only small victories in hand, but that small amount of progress leaves room for hope. Ceylan doesn't provide that parachute to his audience. It's a film about falling that admits gravity is often the victor.
With the picture centered around the life of a photographer, the camera is often stationary. The beautiful scenery of an Instabul winter exists within a picture frame. The occasional pan following the subject, executed with the utmost patience, leads to an equally stunning composition. Ceylan repeatedly finds pivot points granting him the ability to express movement without betraying the stillness suiting the story.