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The Barometer of Affect (Translated from Greek by Tina Sideris) Our inner content, that which determines our decisions, is just as changeable as the weather. The barometer of our psyche often and unpredictably turns from positive to negative, only to be followed once again by "sunshine". And so on. It is significant that, as a rule, the reasons for weather changes are not predictable. A sudden "click" reveals something specific, each time, but of invisible "geographical" character. Isa, a professor of architecture and the far younger Bahar, artistic director of low budget television series, are a couple. In spite of his vast introversion, Isa lets his boredom with this relationship show, a fact that Bahar intuits. At some point, during their summer vacation, using the usual excuses and the also usual comforting words, Isa will try to break up while still remaining friends, something she refuses and returns to Istanbul. Thoughts of the sensuous Serap, who is in a long term relationship with his friend, frequently intrude in Isa's work. His chance meeting of the couple in an Istanbul bookstore, awakes desires in him. He bullies his way to Serap's house and in spite of her resistance, the visit turns into a fierce sexual encounter. The next day she invites him to her house, but he refuses her now provocative behavior -Serap had already informed him that Bahar is part of a crew shooting deep in Anatolia. It is already heavy midwinter. And while he had intended, as he had told a colleague, to spend his winter vacation alone in a sunny country, he suddenly leaves by airplane for the snow-bound town where Bahar has been living and working for months. In the two meetings that Isa manages to have with her, he is clumsy but insistent, trying to get her to change her mind, to convince her that he is a changed man and that he wants to - and can - make her happy. He asks her to come back to Istanbul, as early as tomorrow. She categorically refuses. It is late at night and Bahar knocks on the door of the hotel where Isa is staying. She sleeps with him, obviously repentant. In the morning, determined to go back with him, she happily recounts a dream to him. He, with his face a cold mask, asks her what time she has to be at work. Dumbstruck, she replies "at 9". And he responds: "So let's go get you a good breakfast and then I think I'll leave for the airport from there". In the last shot of the film, Bahar, at the shooting location, watches the flight of the plane through the dense snowfall. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's fourth feature film Climates won the FIPRESCI prize at this year's Cannes. He may be considered the most important director in Turkish cinema today. But, the significance of his work and the recognition which it has received outside of Turkey is not limited to the indication: Turkish. Without disputing his ethnological metier and geographic identity, what shapes his work is the eclectic westernization of the story line and the film's characters with their psychological portraits (especially so in Climates), while evidence of Islamic culture on the other hand is something negligable. The conformity of their behaviour to the contemporary urban social scene and chiefly of their individual existential enquiries into the inner self bear the stamp of a secular, as well as liberal, questioning attitude that is so familiar to Western thinking. Clinging to the crucible of Istanbul as an umbilical chord, the heroes of the film (Isa, Bahar, Serap and the rest) represent the urban sort of intellectuals and those involved with the contemporary artistic professions as we know them in European societies. It would be absolutely wrong to interpret Isa as an anti-hero. On the contrary, he is a familiar as well as true sample of an attitude. In the past we would have said "unwholesomely" indecisive, the result of profuse choices and certainly not of a romantic inclination. He seeks and rejects through "meteorological" disturbances - of seeking and denying. Even love is nothing but an "empty shirt", although the viewer feels that in his deepest moral core nests an unmapped "paradise". His positive, aesthetic relationship with nature and its functions is not random. To sum up, Isa has "relatives" in literature and cinema, as for example "L'Etranger" by Camus, Antonioni (The Night, The Adventure, The Eclipse), Bergman, Tarkovsky's Nostalgia, Omer Kavur's Zebercet (Motherland Hotel), as well as Mahmut Ozdemir (Distant)] Isa in Climates is a clone of these in a way. And of course, it is always the film, the concrete result, which must prove the above hypotheses. Ceylan succeeds in doing this with his careful cinematic inscription, personal style and details rich in direction which are used in an original fashion, with wise economy at the right moment and correct frequency. A European cinematic proposal with particular interest since it is also accompanied by elements from the heritage of the cultural "genetic code" of the East - but in the far background. Just like every accomplished and visionary cinematic narrator (that is, one to whom the script as well as the direction belong), Ceylan knows that the film frame is a vast, and at the same time, despairingly small space, into which one must fit one's images in the best possible way, "phrase by phrase". To "say" much with the images and to connote much more. To envision much while remaining within the smothering borders of aesthetic balance. For example, in a wide, beautiful shot-Ceylan's ability in this is recognized-dominated by the distant and the alienating, implants of faraway sounds are grafted, such as the howl of a dog, the monotonous sound of a pigeon, or the unexpected flight of a bee in the nothingness of an archeological site, or the "adventures" of a dry chick pea on the floor, or the smokestack of a ship on the Bos-phorus or the sounds of a storm. Suddenly, a human gaze comes up from the corner of the frame, invading, inundating, almost in a close-up, which protractedly and inscrutably looks at the viewer/lens. In Distant, his previous film, he referred to Tarko-vsky and included scenes, on video, from Stalker. In Climates he establishes this intervention of the human face, almost covering the frame, in order for the viewer to join the conversation, mainly with the two basic characters of the film, Isa and Bahar and their internal events. The observation of these "dialogues" - glances between viewer and film character - occurs in a comprehensible, protracted rhythm. The minimalist (contrary to what is true for the majority of Turkish directors) use of music (the piano theme of the film has an elegiac fragility) and the generally dexterous use of the sound track, give a multi-valent quality to the internal (mete-orogical?) storms which constitute the artistic identity of the film and its closed, anthropocentric character. Finally, it seems impossible for a Ceylan film to exist without having at least two sequences in snow-covered landscapes. The aesthetic sensitivity with which he renders them is splendid. It becomes a reference point without becoming a mannerism. A feeling of insight and responsibility is demonstrated by the fact that Nuri Bilge Ceylan himself and his wife took on the two leading roles. Their interpretative effort marked the result of the film to a significant degree.
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