Last night, I saw Uzak (Turkish, meaning distant), who won the Cannes Jury Prize ten years ago. He has the same style, but gives people a different small and meticulous; no fanfare, indifferent but profound sadness, just up to the heart. The story is about an Istanbul-based photographer who is in existential crisis after a divorce and receives a cousin who is unemployed in the countryside and goes to the city to try his luck. The photographer and his cousin have no feelings, and the two lonely men coexist in the same room. Things didn’t go the way they were, and frustrated people couldn’t take it for granted that they could redeem each other; on the contrary, with the self-evident details laid out, people had to admit embarrassingly the torment and suffering of interpersonal alienation.
The film captures the intoxicating and melancholy scenery of Istanbul, and it is impossible not to think of a passage that Pamuk so inevitably echoes: "I feel that 'Huzun' does not come from the protagonist's broken and painful experience, nor from his failure to gather with him. Beloved woman, on the contrary, it seems that the "huzun" that fills the scenery, streets and scenic spots has penetrated into the hero's heart, breaking his will. So if you want to know the hero's story and share his sorrow, it seems that you only need to look at that Landscape. For these movie protagonists, as for the protagonists in Tampina's novel "Peace," there are only two ways to face a desperate situation: walk along the Bosphorus coast, or go to the back streets of the city Staring at the ruins."
At the end of the film, the photographer can only stare at the eternal Bosphorus.
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