Rent About Dry Grasses (2023)

Another gem from Nuri Bilge Ceylan - About Dry Grasses review by PD

With its wintry, rural setting, this latest from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan features his trademark compositional allure, opening here with a wide shot of a man being dropped off by a van at the edge of an icy field, his dark figure contrasting starkly against the pale ground and sky. This is Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a middle-school teacher who is bitterly serving out the last year of his assignment at a remote village school. Similar to Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, this is a character portrait of a distinctly unlikeable man—though here, Samet (given a veiled dangerousness by Celiloglu) remains stuck in a state of self-delusion until the end. Samet is so preoccupied with puffing himself up, and with controlling the given situation around him, that he woefully miscalculates of a number of personal encounters, most notably with Sevim (beautifully played by Ece Bagci), one of his students; the scenes involving the two of them are quite masterful, leaving us with the distinct feeling that there’s so much more to Sevim than meets Samet’s eye, if only the self-obsessed fool would be curious enough to look.

Meanwhile, Ceylan's visual compositions are stunning once again — a shot for example of Samet and a colleague retrieving water from a mountaintop well, which seems to float in the clouds is particularly memorable—and unexpected touches arrive when the film cuts to widescreen renditions of the portraits Samet takes of villagers with his camera, as well as a bizarre moment in which Samet breaks the fourth wall by opening a door and walking across the soundstage where the film is being shot. As ever with Ceylan, much of the film consists of lengthy dialogues about life, the universe and everything, with occasional references to the country’s political tensions, although here class dynamics also feature. Probably the most arresting scene is that which occurs between Samet and Nuray, a teacher from another town, and a recent amputee. As Nuray, Merve Dizdar gives one of those electric supporting performances that threatens to grab the film from its lead, particularly since Nuray has a voracious intelligence that sees through Samet immediately, as well as a sorrowful weariness in the wake of her injury.

Many will doubtless be put off by its style ('nothing happens') and its running time (well over 3 hours) but for fans like me it could have gone on for days. Wonderful stuff.