Distant (Uzak)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is walking in the footsteps of Tarkovsky and Kiarostami as the darling of international festivals for his excruciatingly-slow, emotionally-deadpan, anti-action films. But as with them, patience rewards. This Turkish film inventories all the forms of distance between people in proximity. An Istanbul photographer allows a country cousin to camp out in his apartment while looking for work, where they rub up against each other in ways that with subtle humor reveal their personalities, in long, static, but exquisitely composed takes. The photographer is disengaged and disenchanted, most especially in his relations with women. The younger cousin walks around in the snow and fog, looking for women as much as for work. They both fail to connect. Though there are moments of strange beauty, this is a bleak landscape indeed, like so many mega-cities around the world where people torn from their communal roots congregate in economic despair and personal isolation. (2004, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-84.)