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Climates
The opening scene of Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, about the year-long breakdown of a relationship, holds the key to the director's accomplishment — and a hint to his one shortcoming. A man and a woman, Isa and Bahar (played by Ceylan and his wife, Ebru), wander quietly around a deserted Hellenic ruin, somewhere on the Turkish coast. While he photographs their surroundings and the decaying Greek columns (anything but her), she stays intently focused on him, a wistful, melancholy look in her eyes. They exchange one line of dialogue — he asks her if she's bored yet — and then go back to hovering in their separate worlds, light years apart. And there we have it. Although Ceylan will offer one or two more scenes of domestic crisis before Isa and Bahar break up, he gives us all we really need to know about this relationship right here at the very beginning. The subtle dance of mutual annoyance, the distant sense of wanting to love someone but not being able to anymore — it's all here, conveyed through the director's austere, hypnotic visuals and unusually expressive sound design. But you might very well miss it.
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