Just as Michaelangelo sculptured into marble until he set the angel trapped within free, so did Nuri Bilge Ceylan hone his sublime masterpiece, Winter Sleep, from digitally-captured footage, discreet use of Franz Schubert's Sonata in A major D959, and refined and beautifully-nuanced performances. This year's Palme d'Or winner is a monumental film built on character studies inspired by the short stories of Russian playwright and writer, Anton P. Chekhov, and filmed in a unique style that at times recalls that of Andrei Tarkovsky. There is even a scene with a horse mirroring the one in Andrei Rublev, yet set to a different rhythm. The narrative, though, is closer to that of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage at times.
However, regardless of his influences, Ceylan is no one other than himself, a modern poet of cinema, endowed of a photographer's sensibility and unfaltering lyricism. His camera pans across vast, rocky plains and snowy mountains, pauses on an animal struggling out of water, and is arrested by the pictorial human visages shrouded into warm light and even warmer, stunningly clear colors.
Winter Sleep is sheer beauty in some places, its images basking into a rare purity, the vistas and the use of natural light subtly enhanced by an understated shot composition that makes the ensemble all the more effective. Ceylan uses his digital camera with a sure hand, eschewing the pretence of it being a substitute for celluloid, instead exploring the medium to the fullest of its artistic potential. He paints rather than films: gently superimposing human drama over the sprawling vastness of natural landscapes. This contrast serves to make the human struggles of the film both immemorial as the elements and tiny and ephemeral by comparison.
The film is carried by towering performances, especially that of the expressive Demet Akbag, who demonstrates a wide range and whose dark, haunting gaze we follow across the wilderness, be it human or that of nature. The actors inhabit characters written with a finesse and psychological acuity straight out of Chekhov's page. The shifting sands of the diversity of the human experience enfold against the backdrop of a mesmerizing scenery that seems indifferent, sympathetic, unyielding and reflective at the same time. Snow falls in time flakes equally over the mountains of Anatolia and the conversations of the characters. There is a mysterious continuum between the two, one that Winter Sleep does not hasten to explain.
The cinematography of the film is evocative, hypnotic even, bolstered by Ceylan's long takes and his delicate, non-invasive style of editing. It is the work of director of photography, Gökhan Tiryaki, collaborator not only of Ceylan but also of Yılmaz Erdoğan. Tiryaki's camera is meandering, faithfully following a car as it inserts itself into rural Anatolia with its houses literally carved into the mountain, yet remaining steady throughout, as it delves into a slow-burn plot of failed marriage, failed dreams and failed illusions. Neither director or cinematographer stylize this image of what Chekhov liked to call “fallen life”. It's just there and in some way, it's utterly unfair how beautiful it all is.
Blending human portraits taken from Chekhov, his unique literary sensibilities, Ceylan's own pictorial eye to a pace that's more of a crawl but never not engrossing, the film speaks in a language of its own, not fully Western and not wholly Oriental, paying homage to a century of Turkish cinema, a fact that did not escape the director himself, who mentioned it in his Palme d'Or acceptance speech. In my opinion, a cinematic culture can hardly hope for a more worthwhile landmark than that represented by Winter Sleep.
My assessment: masterpiece
Film details according to imdb.com:
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Written by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Anton Chekhov (short stories)
Cinematography by: Gökhan Tiryaki
Shot with Sony CineAlta F65, Sony F65
However, regardless of his influences, Ceylan is no one other than himself, a modern poet of cinema, endowed of a photographer's sensibility and unfaltering lyricism. His camera pans across vast, rocky plains and snowy mountains, pauses on an animal struggling out of water, and is arrested by the pictorial human visages shrouded into warm light and even warmer, stunningly clear colors.
Winter Sleep is sheer beauty in some places, its images basking into a rare purity, the vistas and the use of natural light subtly enhanced by an understated shot composition that makes the ensemble all the more effective. Ceylan uses his digital camera with a sure hand, eschewing the pretence of it being a substitute for celluloid, instead exploring the medium to the fullest of its artistic potential. He paints rather than films: gently superimposing human drama over the sprawling vastness of natural landscapes. This contrast serves to make the human struggles of the film both immemorial as the elements and tiny and ephemeral by comparison.
The film is carried by towering performances, especially that of the expressive Demet Akbag, who demonstrates a wide range and whose dark, haunting gaze we follow across the wilderness, be it human or that of nature. The actors inhabit characters written with a finesse and psychological acuity straight out of Chekhov's page. The shifting sands of the diversity of the human experience enfold against the backdrop of a mesmerizing scenery that seems indifferent, sympathetic, unyielding and reflective at the same time. Snow falls in time flakes equally over the mountains of Anatolia and the conversations of the characters. There is a mysterious continuum between the two, one that Winter Sleep does not hasten to explain.
The cinematography of the film is evocative, hypnotic even, bolstered by Ceylan's long takes and his delicate, non-invasive style of editing. It is the work of director of photography, Gökhan Tiryaki, collaborator not only of Ceylan but also of Yılmaz Erdoğan. Tiryaki's camera is meandering, faithfully following a car as it inserts itself into rural Anatolia with its houses literally carved into the mountain, yet remaining steady throughout, as it delves into a slow-burn plot of failed marriage, failed dreams and failed illusions. Neither director or cinematographer stylize this image of what Chekhov liked to call “fallen life”. It's just there and in some way, it's utterly unfair how beautiful it all is.
Blending human portraits taken from Chekhov, his unique literary sensibilities, Ceylan's own pictorial eye to a pace that's more of a crawl but never not engrossing, the film speaks in a language of its own, not fully Western and not wholly Oriental, paying homage to a century of Turkish cinema, a fact that did not escape the director himself, who mentioned it in his Palme d'Or acceptance speech. In my opinion, a cinematic culture can hardly hope for a more worthwhile landmark than that represented by Winter Sleep.
My assessment: masterpiece
Film details according to imdb.com:
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Written by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Anton Chekhov (short stories)
Cinematography by: Gökhan Tiryaki
Shot with Sony CineAlta F65, Sony F65