Similarly, this film will use its pauses and silences to great effect. It’s not traditionally ‘moving the story,’ as defined by a Lowest Common Denominator Hollywood film, where all things are telegraphed in advance, but it does work. And it also employs what might be called red herrings to deceive a viewer into thinking the film will go in one direction, only to go in another. A good example is the scene where Isa meets some old friends at a bookstore. In a Hollywood film, this would have been the point of introduction for a major plot arc. Instead, as in most of our lives, it is just a moment, a face from the past, and one which Isa is not seemingly rapt with seeing, for he blows off his old acquaintance, who, it should be noted, equally blows off Isa.
Yet, this moment is character development and narrative push, for we get a sense of just how selfish and self-absorbed Isa is. Furthermore, the whole scene makes a statement about the Turkish intelligentsia of the day — a statement that can be seen as political. The point is, though, that Ceylan does not hammer his audience with the statement. It develops naturally out of a seemingly random, but plausible, life moment.
In this way, we see the complexity of this film that many critics wrongly label as spare or simple. It’s that they only can recognize one sort of complexity — the willfully complex, not that which is more ‘organically’ complex. And, while not always a given, a complex film, or complex art, if good or great, almost always gets better with repeated engagements, while simple art does not. And, in another way, this film also complexes, and that way is visually. The visual arts have the capacity to brand their import into the minds of a percipient the way writing or music simply cannot, because primates are hard-wired as primarily visual creatures. Humans are especially so, which is why humans are far more visually differentiated than any other simian species. And Ceylan realizes this brand, and uses a subtly shifting color palette to inflict moods, or ‘climates,’ into the viewers minds.
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