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Distant is a great example
of the power cinema can wield in this age of global transition. The camera
has the capacity to reduce the op-ed and talking-head verbiage of global
politics to the evocative primal level of shared human experience. It
can put us in contact with the determined realities of individuals both
rich and poor in social structures removed from our own, unraveling the
warp of cultural circumstance from the delicate woof of the human spirit.
The power of the international film festival, of venues that make global
cinema available to the public, is not simply that films can make us aware
of the political and economic conditions of specific locations beyond
the nightly news feature. But rather that in this information age, the
global theater has the capacity through the raw material of film itself
to evoke and intone stories that can inform our own. It is not just a
matter of learning more information; it is a matter of being addressed
personally by cinematic realities.
Distant does just this. It seeks to evoke and intone specific meditations
on the psychology of its subjects. Yusuf travels to Istanbul after being
laid off from his factory job in search of work. His plan is to stay with
Mahmut, a relative who used to live in his village, while he looks for
a job at the docks.
Mahmut is an accomplished photographer, still clinging to the faded dreams
of following in Tarkovsky’s footsteps and his love for his ex-wife. Yusuf’s
inability to find a job in Turkey’s depressed economic climate offers
him enough free time to experience urban life, and he comes face to face
with the unattainable dreams of the big city as he aimlessly stalks a
woman who lives on Mahmut’s street. Yusuf’s desire to travel and see the
world through a job on the ships plays well against Mahmut’s “been there,
done that” resignation. It is a tale as simple as the city mouse and the
country mouse, but the forced interaction between Mahmut and Yussuf brings
to light the hidden tensions and personal difficulties that lead Distant
to its unexpected conclusion.
In many ways, Distant is a travelogue of the human spirit in the context
of a socially disruptive economy. Ceylan doesn’t really tell an explicit
“story” through the film, but rather lets us linger on key emotional landmarks
of its characters, pitting our need for resolution against our need for
understanding. He seems determined to force us into submission to his
thoughtful pace. In the tradition of Tarkovsky he patiently allows us
to identify the meaning of the spaces he creates. But Ceylan also brings
to Distant a controlling subjectivity that Tarkovsky often seemed to deny
the cool sterility of his images.
In the evolving tradition of Sokurov, Ceylan materializes intriguing personal
spaces from attention to the physical actions of his actors. But fortunately
Distant never falls in on itself the way many of Sokurov’s more minimalist
sequences tend to. He merely locks us into the pace and details his chosen
landscape requires. And in the classic archetypal tradition of Pudovkin,
Ceylan constructs his story through a series of careful chosen, smoothly
edited sequences. Distant never suffers from lingering in the particulars
of each shot at the expense of the narrative whole.
His approach to drama could be construed as minimalist, as the gentle
striking of a few chosen notes over the course of time. Many seem to approach
films of Distant’s genre this way. But it would be better to think of
Distant in terms of the arousing singularity of something like Gorecki’s
Third Symphony. In this famous symphony, Gorecki allows dichotomous elements
of tone and texture to react to each other in a fluid trajectory. Though
intentionally simplistic, it is by no means minimalist. Its textures and
themes, though stark, draw their power from completely filling the narrow
patterns they follow.
Minimalism often doesn’t intend to take us anywhere, but rather seeks
to expose us to a repeating (or non-repeating) theme over time through
an intentionally limited medium. This is not to say that there is anything
wrong with this methodology. Sokurov’s Mother and Son, and perhaps even
Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia to a lesser extent, is a great example of the effectiveness
of this approach. But Distant weaves its social oppositions slowly and
carefully, taking us to realization at the pace that it genuinely occurs
in life. Its simplicity is an invitation to participate in its elaborate
social point that occurs within its alanced visual form.
It isn’t hard to identify Ceylan’s influences; he really wears them on
his sleeve. There are several open allusions to Tarkovsky’s films in Distant,
and his theory lives and breathes in a lot of choices Ceylan’s camera
makes. Many of these shots are finely crafted, reminiscent of the careful
urban staging of contemporary photographers like Gursky or Struth. At
the same time breathtaking and alienating. And he really is working well
within the Eastern European tendency to focus on the way economic ideology
contributes to class distinction. As these ideologies crumble, so does
our ability to understand ourselves in society. But Ceylan also brings
a vitality to Distant that enables the film to step beyond the bounds
of his influences.
In one telling scene, Mahmut and Yusuf sit watching the trolley car sequence
from Stalker, a sequence I rewind to watch several times before letting
the film go on almost every time I screen it. The three trespassers are
on the tracks, looking forward into the overly green trees and buffeted
by the overly quiet wind of the Zone. All around them sounds the metallic
click of the tracks splitting the eerie silence with a surreal wave of
diminishing noise. For several minutes Tarkovsky lets this foreboding
sound fill the scene, perhaps keying us into the elemental abstractions
of the Zone. It certainly is a spot in Tarkovsky’s work where sound itself
becomes a dominant element. Perhaps in a smirking take on what most wouldn’t
admit is a common experience of Tarkovsky, Mahmut watches for a while
and unexpectedly switches over to an adult film after a few minutes of
unflinching boredom. It turns out that Mahmut’s plan was to bore Yusuf
so much that he would leave the room, thus letting Mahmut watch his other
“movie” in privacy. Ceylan seems lightheartedly aware of the lengths to
which he forces his viewers to go.
Ceylan may have chosen this specific clip intentionally. It is one spot
in Tarkovsky where sound plays a major role in the effectiveness of the
long take. This happens as well in the famous driving sequence of Solaris,
but not very often in his other films. In Distant there is a careful effort
to work environmental noise into the emotional action of the story.
At times we are simply carried along aurally by specific sounds in the
same way Bresson carries us along visually by a specific series of close-ups.
This use of sound is often matched with another tendency of Ceylan that
steps beyond the intentioned passivity of Tarkovsky. Almost reminiscent
of a few of Maya Deren’s early shorts, Ceylan will take a lengthy scene
with little or no dialogue and break it up by use of turning lights on
and off in a proportioned rhythm or playing with our perception of the
presence or absence of characters in the frame. A woman will seemingly
appear on the street out of nowhere, or someone will slip behind a mirrored
pillar that removes them momentarily from the frame.
It is hard to write about Distant in any other way than describing the
architecture of the film itself. In this respect, he deserves readings
that for the most part work the best for a director like Antonioni. Though
the story it tells is an important one, Ceylan has taken on the mantle
of a formidable approach to filmmaking that will hopefully turn into an
aesthetic career. The lingering effect of Distant’s final scene may best
be expressed in a passage from Max Picard’s curious classic The World
of Silence: “The power of silence was once so great in the human face
that all external happenings were absorbed in this silence. The resources
of the world were thereby as it were unspent and unexhausted.”
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