Yet, even those critics who enjoy or praise the film often do not get it, labeling it something like Minimalist, without even truly knowing what the term means. Distant is the antithesis of Minimalist. It is suffused with detail, detail that arouses intense interest in seemingly throwaway things, something Minimalism does not do. Minimalism is not a synonym for minimal, used as an adjective. Minimalism is not suffused in detail, it lacks detail and focuses on the lack of detail to reveal something.
Things are detailed and do not occur: the pair go out on a shoot in the countryside, yet the jaded Mahmut is not even moved by natural splendor any longer; Yusuf trashes the apartment with booze and cigarets when Mahmut visits his ill mom at a hospital; and Mahmut moons over his ex-wife’s leaving for a life in Canada. The scene of Mahmut and Nazan (Zuhal Gencer) at a café, both still in love with each other, yet waiting for the other to say something, make the admission of love, yet neither does, is one of the great love scenes on film — even as it is 180° from a similar moment in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, where the two lovers give in to their desires.
The film’s ending comes rather abruptly, and over something small — a detail that again disproves the claim of Minimalism. Mahmut accuses Yusuf of stealing a silver pocket watch he recently used for a shoot. However, he does so by implication, not direct accusation. Yet when Mahmut finds that he has misplaced the watch, he does not tell Yusuf, and lets Yusuf feel accused and paranoid. Yusuf then takes off, but there is no goodbye scene. All we see are Yusuf’s keys to the apartment hanging on a hook — which shows that Ceylan has learnt much from Ozu’s use of narrative ellipses to hone in on the really important points of a story (something he earlier does in scenes with Mahmut’s girlfriend and mother). Mahmut then finds the cheap sailor cigarets that Yusuf smoked behind a couch pillow, and goes out for a walk near the Istanbul harbor, where he smokes them, as he looks out over the harbor, even though he earlier mocked Yusuf for his choice in brand. The final shot is a rare close-up of Mahmut’s craggy mien, staring off into nothingness.
This sort of ending is a deft and mature touch that Ceylan was incapable of in his earlier work. Like all great artists, he avoids being didactic and moralizing. Will either main character change? Likely not, even if they would in a standard Hollywood film. But why force a contrived Hollywood ending onto a great film about realistic characters who are so distant from their own selves that they are incapable of such solution? How often do most people just go on being themselves, despite events which might force rarer, deeper, more aware individuals to change their lives? Mahmut will, despite smoking Yusuf’s cigarets, likely grow lonelier and lonelier, as ennui takes a death grip over his remaining years, while Yusuf will simply just use his "forced" leaving of Mahmut’s apartment as another in a long line of excuses to fail — just as he used the factory’s closing to impose his anomic life on Mahmut.
Article comments
1 - Joe
The Tarkovsky film that Mahmut watches is "Stalker", not "Solaris". Other than that, though, your review was excellent.