THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
More than once in the past, it happened to the Turk Nuri Bilge Ceylan to yield to the temptation of the beautiful image, to the weight of the great meanings, to a somewhat affected seriousness, in short to a certain authoristic mortuary. However, it would be unfair to reduce the filmmaker to this, he who also knew, especially with May clouds (1999) , Uzak (2002) And Winter Sleep(Palme d’or in 2014), describe heady existential swerves, prolong the gesture of modern cinema, exercise a seasoned photographer’s gaze, finally have a long conversation with beauty.
His last feature film, Dried herbs, presented in competition at Cannes, presents itself as an imposing mass of fiction lasting more than three hours, pitting a handful of bitter characters against each other, in the rural solitudes of an Anatolia sealed off under the winter snows, all of which raises fears of a new thought straight away. However, it is something quite different, more conflicting, more inseparable, which is happening.
A silhouette advances with a sullen step in the white expanse. This is Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a teacher on his way to his class in a remote village, awaiting a transfer to Istanbul which does not arrive. Chomping at the bit in this plain with narrow morals, the man allows himself inappropriate gestures towards some of his students, such as little Sevim with long curly hair, to whom he grants favors and gifts.
Unfathomable baseness
A complaint does not take long to go up to the rectorate, which incriminates him as well as his colleague Kenan (Musab Ekici), his roommate, hardened bachelor just like him. The two men are courting the same woman, Nuray (Merve Dizdar, Best Actress Award at Cannes), whom they met in the nearest town. A teacher too, she presents a character opposite to that of Samet: a woman of conviction, politicized, activist to the point of having lost a leg during recent demonstrations. Put on the hot seat, Samet sinks into the mire of his stunted soul, reigning over his class as a childish tyrant, and, in the amorous arena, showing proof of unfathomable baseness.
No doubt, it is indeed a strange invitation that Nuri Bilge Ceylan extends to us: that of spending the one hundred and ninety-seven minutes of his Dried herbs in the company of a scoundrel cooked in its own juice. The film thus proposes to dabble in a background of acrimony and resentment, a priori rather unsavory, but faithful to certain depths of the human soul, as could be the case with Ingmar Bergman (Shame, Screams and whispers, Autumn Sonata).
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