Distant
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Â Emin Toprak, Zuhal Gencer Muzaffer Ã?zdemir DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Turkish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 105 minutes DVD Release Date: 2005-03-22 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: New Yorker |
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Movie Reviews of Distant
Movie Review: patience-demanding art film
Summary: 3 Stars
More mood piece than actual drama, the appropriately titled "Distant" is an emotionally detached Turkish film that brings new meaning to the term "minimalist storytelling." What little story it does tell involves an unemployed man from the provinces who comes to Istanbul in search of a job. While there, he stays with his cousin, a divorced professional photographer, who prefers to lead a life of drab solitude rather than interrelate with his fellow man. Naturally, having this rube from the country suddenly show up on his doorstep does not sit well with the life and style of this virtual hermit.
Since this is, essentially, a film about a lack of communication, it is understandable that very little of the screen time is devoted to characters interacting with one another. Instead, long stretches of the movie are taken up in showing us characters wandering through the stark snow-covered landscapes of wintry Istanbul or sitting in dreary rooms either alone or with other people who are equally cut off from those around them. "Distant" has much of the feel of an Antonioni film, in that the beautifully composed and photographed background comes to predominate over the people in the foreground, a visual correlative to mankind's ennui, alienation and angst. As a director, Nuri Bilge Ceylon (who also wrote the film) uses the camera almost as an artist does his canvas, painting icily beautiful pictures of the world around him. Ceylan's unhurried, deliberate pacing becomes strangely hypnotic as he dwells on one extraordinary image after another. Most of the film is spent concentrating on the mundane, day-to-day activities of these two passive, largely nonverbal individuals. The film may drive some people mad with its lack of drama and action, but those able to appreciate its almost Zen-like rhythm and mood will find the movie intriguing. There's an extraordinarily surreal shot of a docked tanker listing precariously towards port that is alone worth the price of admission (or rental fee).
For some, "Distant" may be little more than an art film with a capital "A," but those with the patience to go beyond the obvious will relish its uniqueness.