(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan has won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Gold Palm itself for his previous film winter Sleep from 2014. So would the pear tree also participated in the main competition at the same festival this year, albeit without being rewarded with any prize.
Like winter Sleep the new film is about three hours long drama from the Turkish countryside, with a lot of dialogue and relatively little external action. In other words, this is not a commercial kiosk nightmare, but a nuanced character and relationship study that rewards the patient spectator.
Author ambition.
The film's main character is the young academic Sinan (Dogu Demirkol), who returns to a small coastal town in Canakkale Province. Here he will live with his parents in a transitional phase after finishing his studies. The ambition is to become a writer, and he has already written an essayistic and partly autobiographical novel he is trying to get published. This is probably why he is not taking his imminent teaching exam very seriously, despite the fact that this profession is prestigious in Turkey. He is also of conscientious age, and several of his fellow students have ended up as soldiers in the military, fighting alleged terrorists as the safest path to income.
This time, the filmmaker has listed both Chekhov and
Dostoevsky as sources of inspiration.
Much of the drama revolves around Sinan's relationship with his father, elementary school teacher Idris (Murat Cemcir). Sinan realizes early on that his father is still struggling with gambling addiction and that he is therefore indebted to many in the village. In addition, the father is working to dig a well in the country house of Sinan's grandparents, where no one else thinks it will be possible to find water. The symbolism in this speaks with rather capital letters, but is so multifaceted that it never feels outright banal.
There is a certain contrast between the historical significance of the area and how little drama there is today: It was in Canakkale that the Turks killed the British and the French during World War I (in the Battle of Gallipoli), and it is in the same province that the ancient Troy was lying.
The film is made up of a series of conversations Sinan has with people he meets in and around the rural home. The meetings include an old flame that gives him a fleeting kiss – and criticizes Sin's condescending attitude towards the village and its inhabitants. This arrogance is further confirmed as Sinan ends up in discussion with a local, successful writer, in a longer sequence that eventually slides into a dream scene.
Illusion Groundbreaking.
Oddly enough, this film comes to Norwegian cinemas the same month as Olivier Assayas' Between the lines (review here), which is also a highly dialogue-driven film centered around the author of a partially autobiographical novel. However, the similarities between the two films are not very striking: Where Assayas has created an enjoyable drama comedy based on the publishing industry and the trend for so-called reality literature, is So would the pear tree a more melancholic tale of artistic ambitions in the face of an illusion-breaking reality.
Certain elements appear to be deliberately unresolved.
Possibly, there is an irony in the fact that Sin's mother and sister almost constantly watch soap operas on television, in a film that, like such series, consists of dialogues between characters in more or less close relation to each other. However, Ceylan and his regular photographer Gökhan Tiryaki make sure So would the pear tree for a cinematic experience with tasteful compositions and elegant camera performances. Occasionally, unconventional visual solutions are chosen, which when parts of a discussion about the relevance of religion in society are filmed from a distance – often with the characters walking away from the camera.
Poetic and realistic
With the depiction of local bureaucracy, the inflamed relationship between city and country and the more structural aspects of the country's military power, it can be argued that So would the pear tree draws a picture of today's Turkey. But the focus of Ceylan and his co-authors Akin Aksu and Ebru Ceylan is primarily on the people who populate the story.
Certain elements, moreover, appear to be deliberately unresolved, such as the fantasy sequences and some seemingly important characters that do not get the dramaturgical function expected.
winter Sleep was loosely based on Chekhov's short stories, and now the filmmaker must have been inspired by both Chekhov and Dostoevsky. Again, our sympathy for the various characters changes throughout the film, albeit not to the same extent as in the previous film. Sin's youthful arrogance is recognizable, but since he exhibits a consistently patronizing attitude toward the people around him, it is difficult to really sympathize with him. On the other hand, we are gaining more and more respect for the impressively positive father, who seems to have found a kind of balance between dreaming and pragmatic daily life – despite his life choices having greatly affected both his family's finances and his own esteem in the local community.
This time too, Ceylan has made a complex film about credible characters in everyday situations – without being trivial. Unlike winter Sleep however, it would not justify The Pear Tree's extended playing time in the same compelling way. Several scenes are seen as unnecessarily long, and the story might need some clearer turning points. At the same time, it is fascinating to see how the filmmaker avoids collecting all the threads of the drama and yet it makes it feel complete. The wild pear tree is both poetic and realistic, without these elements at the expense of each other.
So would the pear tree their Norwegian cinema premiere 3. May
