BACK STAGE

SASA MAJUMA | Tuesday August 7, 2007 00:00

If Orhan Pamuk, the great Turkish writer of Snow, Istanbul and My Name is Red, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature 2006, was to write a script for a film, it might be very much like this one. Uzak is a slow and beautiful film that captures the nuances in the lives of two Istanbul cousins. Each, in his own way, is drifting and alienated from themselves and their world.

Uzak is a film that belongs to Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He wrote the script and though there are no credits to Orhan Pamuk, his name is given to one of the characters fleeing to Canada. Is this a fleeting tribute to the great author? Perhaps, but then Nuri Bilge Ceylan also directed his film, served as his own cinematographer and produced it, after editing it with Ayhan Ergrsel. The non-professional cast all are his friends and family. Together they have achieved a stunning film that in 2003 was recognised at Cannes by winning the Grand Prix.

The award of 'Best Actor' at Cannes in 2003 was shared by the two male leads in Uzak, Muzaffer zdemir and Mehmet Emin Toprak (Toprak, pictured here, had died a few months before the Cannes Festival in an automobile accident when he was 28).

The film opens with Yusuf (acted by Toprak) leaving a rural town that has been severely hit by a recession. Its main factory has closed, putting a thousand workers out of jobs. Yusuf thinks he can go to Istanbul and find work as an able-bodied seaman. His older cousin, Mahmut (played by zdemir) said he would take him in. This is more easily said than done, as Mahmut, a professional photographer who appears to be successful from the quality of the furnishings in his flat, has become something of a recluse who leads a secret life.

He is also addicted to TV and porno tapes that he wants to watch alone. His life is as messed up as the mouse-glue tapes he lays to catch the little rodents. Mahmut is as distant from himself as he is from his ex-wife Nazan (Zuhal Gencer Erkaya) whom he still sees and a girlfriend (Nazan Kirilmis) who keeps her distance and stays out of focus in the movie. Mahmut is also distant from his sister and his mother, who needs his support when she gets sick.  His sister denounces him as 'irresponsible' for refusing to get a cell phone. Did you ever know someone who always has to turn the lights off when you have left them on? Or sprays inside your shoes and places them in a cupboard when you enter his flat?

Yusuf is more youthful and open, but is gripped by his own anomie caused by unemployment and his inability to find a job, or gather the courage to speak to a young girl (Ebru Ceylan) who interests him. The janitor (Feridun Doc) in Mahmut's apartment building is amused by their shenanigans. Yusuf is a bit of a country hick, yet he is as devious with Mahmut as he is with him, though Mahmut is the more suspicious of the two. What they have most in common is their loneliness and smoking cigarettes, the refuge of alienated people everywhere? They never go out together, even to the movies. When Mahmut goes to a soire with friends, one denounces photography as dead, yet it is the only thing that is really alive for him. Viewers used to the fast pace of an action film will have to change their expectations if they are to enjoy this movie. Fortunately, it is replete with little surprises, like when the cousins wake up in the morning and find Istanbul covered in thick snow.

Mahmut goes in his small Swatch on a photographic shooting expedition in Anatolia and takes Yusuf with him as an assistant and pays him for his help. There are some wonderful scenes when Yusuf walks through various parts of Istanbul. He finds a city that is more deserted and lacking in intense vibrancy and movement. 

Uzak is one hour and 50 minutes long. It is in Turkish with English subtitles. It is rated 15 plus due to situations and language. Nuri Bilge Ceylan wrote the script, directed, is the cinematographer and editor (with Ayhan Ergrsel) and also the producer. Ebru Ceylan designed the production.

It is filmed on various locales in Turkey. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk