The evolution of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s filmography has been one of the more encouraging cinematic developments of this decade. The most internationally successful Turkish filmmaker since Yilmaz Güney, Ceylan was a still photographer before he became a writer-director; his early features (among them Clouds of May and Distant) speak to the influence of his first medium, trading in landscapes, fixed perspectives, and extended wordless sequences. Though consistently lovely to look at, his films soon grew stale on a thematic level. By the time he made his fourth and fifth features, Climates (2006) and Three Monkeys (2008), it seemed as though Ceylan had exhausted whatever he had had to say and was filling out his scripts with art-movie cliches. He achieved a creative rebirth, though, with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), a film that developed rich ideas about guilt, repentance, and humanity’s place in the universe. For the first time, Ceylan crafted a story worthy of his ambitious imagery.
The progression of the conversations goes a long way in making Wild Pear Tree feel like an epic; the accumulation of ideas feels downright monumental. Indeed the film is structured like a spiritual journey, with each of Sinan’s encounters providing an opportunity to glean wisdom from others. (For the most part, however, he rejects these opportunities.) Ceylan often elides how much time passes between conversations—it could be hours, days, or weeks—and this slippery sense of time forces viewers to focus on the hero’s internal development. The director also emphasizes this aspect through subtle visual cues; he likes to film the back of Sinan’s head when the main character is walking (and he walks often over the course of the film), encouraging the viewer to imagine what’s going on inside of it. He regularly depicts the hero’s peregrinations through a mix of close-ups and extreme wide shots, so that one comes to regard him, alternately, as a complicated psychological case study and as a part of the landscape, a product of social and cosmic forces.
Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In Turkish with subtitles. 189 min. Fri 2/22-Thu 2/28. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
