“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way”
--- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
The new magisterial film, “Winter Sleep” (2014) from the masterful
Turkish film-maker Nure Bilge Ceylan explores one such unhappy family, whose
dilemmas and lives rings true and universal. It is a meditation on a marriage
and human soul that’s as honest, intense, and brutal like an Ingmar Bergman
movie. Ceylan’s previous masterpiece “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” earned the
adjective ‘Chekovian’ for the way he incorporated the issues of class, history,
property into a simple crime scene investigation. Now he has written the script for “Winter
Sleep” based upon two stories of Anton Chekov: “Excellent People”, and “The
Wife”. Shakespeare also inhabits the movie in those elaborate, complex, and
powerful dialogues. In fact this is the first time Ceylan employs challenging
long dialogue scenes, but the brazen, intimate framing keeps it from looking
like a play.
“Winter Sleep” is set in the chilly, mountain desert of the
remotest Cappadocia, a land of cave dwellings, situated in Central Anatolia.
The grey boulders, mushroom-shaped caves, rocks, the snowfall, and wild ponies thundering
across land scream the word ‘picturesque’. But since this being a Ceylan’s
work, the beautiful, isolated landscape serves to symbolize things (not for
panoramic shots), like that of the first snowfall that represents a change of
atmosphere. A baronial grey-haired former actor and local landlord, Mr. Aydin
(Haluk Bilginer) is the story’s protagonist. He has converted the cave-dwellings
into a trendy hotel ‘Othello’. As winter is arriving, most of the tourists
depart from hotel and something familiar to Aydin and his family comes to haunt
them: vanity, self-deception, and yearning.
Aydin seems to have returned to his home village after his
retirement. He spends most of his time in the study, surrounded by books. He
writes a column on art and social morality for the local newspaper, and also
doing research to write a book on the History of Turkish Theatre. Aydin also
fancies himself as a small-time philosopher, but his inherent self-deception
and arrogance is picked up apart by two women in the family; his younger lovely
wife, Nihal (Melisa Sozen) and cynical, recently divorced sister Necla (Demet Akbag). Aydin and his wife live separately in their own part of the house. He
ridicules her charity work and she hates his hypocritical insights.
But, all these unpleasant conflicts rise to the surface due
to an unconnected event. A free-spirited traveler and a hotel guest ask Aydin
whether he has any horses because he has seen some in the hotel’s website.
Aydin replies, “It’s just to decorate the website”. But the little conversation
incites Aydin to buy a pony. He takes his driver and enforcer, Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan) to make a deal for a horse. And as they drive off in their land rover,
a stone lands off in their windshield which nearly leads to an accident. The
stone is thrown by a small boy, Ilyas (Emirhan Doruktutan), whose father was an
ex-con Ismail (Nejat Isler). Ismail is one of Aydins’s deadbeat tenants, who
was beaten and humiliated by the debt collectors. Aydin captures the boy and
sends Hidayet to have reasonable talk with the father. However, Ismail angrily rants
and accuses them of deliberately humiliating him. That unpleasant event makes
Aydin to retreat to his solitude hotel, but more figurative rocks are hurled at
him there.
‘Why should I care about a group of Turkish elitist and
narcissist?’ was one of the things that may come to our mind after reading the
plot and Olympian running time. Patient movie-viewers must watch it because
Ceylan makes us care, like any great literary artist, by keeping the characters
multi-dimensional and honest. Their awfulness and awkwardness are portrayed in
a manner which makes us compare it with our own character traits. Failing
marriage and cynicism of rich towards poor are the two vital themes that run throughout
the movie. But these themes aren’t driven home through convenient good/bad
human forms. There’s a pivotal scene between Aydin, who sits at his desk
writing a column, and his sister Necla, who sits behind him in a sofa and
starts discussing about her brother’s columns. She rips apart at Aydin’s
irritating and hypocritical values towards their dead-beat tenants. Necla
condemns him for cynicism, which as it turns out (through her not resisting evil speech) she also possesses.
Aydin replies to Necla using strong, hurtful words and also
turns onto his wife, who also is enshrouded in hypocrisy. For Nihal, the
charity is an outlet for her passions and dreams. Its one area where she has
full autonomy, but that too is threatened with Aydin’s intrusion. In another
lengthy scene, Nihal and Aydin bicker back-and-forth about their contradictory nature,
but the conversation is once again relevatory and hits on targets. Nihal
perfectly analyses her husband’s behavior, but she has her own faults: like
thinking that philanthropic gifts would solve every problem; or holding immense
animosity towards Aydin, but isn’t ready to get a divorce, fearing that it may
uproot her from the luxurious life. Ceylan perfectly calibrates these two
crucial, verbose scenes without making it seem theatrical or laborious.
Another interesting aspect of the movie is the way Ceylan
tosses up the characters and lets us know how they react in different places.
We could empathize with Nihal as her husband threatens to take away the only
happiness she has left. But, later she somehow insults Ismail by offering him a
wad of money to solve the debt problems. Ismail’s shocking reaction makes her
to face her own ignorance and places values like pride over the power of money.
Rationally, Ismail’s act may seem stupid, but it liberates him from all his
past humiliations. On the other hand, we hate Aydin for his obnoxiousness and
derisive laughs. Nevertheless, he is like the Shakespearean hero, whom we can’t
help but pity him.
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| Director Ceylan after winning Palme d'Or in Cannes |
Although the landscape plays a key role, Ceylan and his
cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki keeps a tight rein on showcasing the
backgrounds. The firelight interiors and the intimate, artistic compositions deserve
a separate, full-blown analysis (it would be a futile attempt for me to do such
analysis after viewing the movie only once). The long dialogues would have never had such a
great impact, if not for the professional actors like Solzen and Bilginer.
“Winter Sleep” (196 minutes) is the kind of rare cinema that
interweaves various forms of art and makes observations that have a more
universal appeal. It provides startling epiphanies without any tidy
resolutions.
Trailer
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