Nuri Big Ceylon, a famous Turkish director, was born in Istanbul, the capital of Turkey, in 1959. There are not many films he has directed, but as of 2014, he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for "Hibernation", and he has won a number of awards and nominations including the Berlin Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, and European Film Awards. Become a hot new director of European cinema in the 21st century.
This "Far" won the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, proving his status as an art film director. At the same time, this film also formed his consistent style of directing films since then: the plot is flat, the speech is restrained, the tone is dull, the soundtrack is small, the few things are shot with very long shots, and in the default narrative, the plot gives way to the image. The unique texture, the delicate light replaces the color of the picture, and the long-term close-up peeks into the inner emotions of the characters.
If this style is good, it means that it has a long artistic conception and is thought-provoking, and if it is ugly, it means "boring". When directing the film, the director deliberately weakened the rendering effect of color, storyline, and music, and focused on the use of shots, the composition of the picture, the emotions of the characters, and the details of life. This is related to Ceylon's entry into the film industry as a photographer. He is better at discovering the beauty of the delicate picture in everything, and shows the effect of photographic photos through a long-term freeze in the film lens.
The original title of the film is "UZAK", and the English title is "Distant". In addition to distance, "distant" also means alienation, indifference, and isolation. Through this film, it can also be extended to the unreachable dreams and the unreachable depths of the soul. Years of hard work have never been able to integrate into that distant place. Ghostly ghost.
At the beginning of the film, a three-minute fixed long shot is used. A lone traveler, Youshu, is walking on the snow-free wilderness under the dark green mountains. The whole shot sets the tone of the film: cold, lonely, and few words.
The second shot was given to another protagonist - Mamu. He was recruiting prostitutes at home, the room was dark, and the woman took the initiative to take off her clothes, and Ma Mu walked over slowly. After scrambling, Mamu cleans up the remnants, falls into solitary contemplation, and is disturbed by the rustling of mice, and while spying on the mice, the phone rings. Here is a detail. The camera is in the bathroom. When the camera shot Ma Mu looking at the mouse, the sticky mouse board at the door of the bathroom is very conspicuous. This sticky mouse board appears three times in the film. There are many such recurring scene films, and every time the plot changes, the recurrence of the scene will bring back the audience's aftertaste, deepen the audience's impression of the scene, and highlight the emotional atmosphere that the director wants to express. When Ma Mu heard the call and was about to answer, he heard the other party's message, and then planned to call, but gave up the call after hesitating. This small detail shows Ma Mu, who has been lonely for a long time, at a loss when he picks up the phone. The other end of the phone may be his ex-wife. For a person who is still nostalgic, he does not have the courage to pick up the phone and reply. , He was afraid, anxious, fearful, and would rather give up the opportunity to communicate from the beginning than face the disappointment after the communication. There are too many scenes in the film that use movie pictures to express the inner emotions of the characters.
The scene of You Shu at the door of his cousin Ma Mu's house is very interesting. Yushu feels shy and clumsy. His hair was messy, his clothes looked like he hadn't washed in a long time, and he was wearing an ugly backpack, typical of a country man. The lens is given to the street, and it seems like a fairy descends, and an elegant woman appears in the lens. Yushu put on his sunglasses, lit a cigarette, leaned on the car and showed a cool look, turning his head to the girl from time to time, and the girl noticed him too. Just when he thought he had succeeded in getting the girl's attention, the car he was relying on beeped its siren, and the girl passed him and was amused by his predicament. The sensitive and inferior You Shu made a fool of himself in front of the beautiful girl, and felt extremely ashamed in his heart, which also laid the groundwork for the scene where the two of them met and did not communicate in the future.
Every scene and detail in the film is worth thinking about. The repeated detail processing and the setting of the environment are a bit too much. A lot of lens language only talks about those one or two things, which is inevitably boring and monotonous. In the process of watching the film, I am amazed at the director's delicate grasp of the subtleties, and at the same time, I also have the idea that the director treats the audience as a child, a mental state that is repeatedly expressed.
The story of the whole film is divided into two clues:
The content of the main line revolves around the estrangement caused by the cultural differences between the two cousins, Mamu and Youshu. It is set against the background of Istanbul, where people are indifferent and the environment is cold. The memory of the ex-wife, and the care of the two brothers for their relatives.
The content of the dark line is laid out by the two brothers' pursuit of their dreams. Ma Mu has worked hard from the countryside to the city for many years. Behind the appearance of decency is the loss of his dreams. He has his own artistic pursuit, but he has to repeatedly shoot commercials. work. And You Shu just joined his cousin from the countryside. He dreams of traveling the world on a big ship, but he has run into a wall many times so that he can't even find a job, let alone a dream. Ma Mu disliked Youshu, but was jealous of Youshu and his dreams. These two mental states made Ma Mu begin to hate Youshu, and would find faults from time to time. A little problem could be magnified by him, and even made a suspicion of Youshu. Stealing watches and turning over Youshu's backpack. Yushu's dream is difficult to achieve, the girl he loves is out of reach, and his inferiority complex is magnified by Ma Mu's indifference and suspicion. His inner struggle is destroyed by pain, and he finally chooses to leave quietly. Two lonely relatives, tormenting each other, destined to be separated, is it what they want after separation? Still lonely after separation.
Relatives who have not lived together for a long time can live with each other for a period of time based on the relationship of respect and affection. However, for two people who are used to loneliness and have very different lifestyles, silent confrontation is inevitable. Mamu can talk to his friends about photography, movies, and women at home. You Shu, who was on the side, was completely speechless. The estrangement created by this relationship could not be resolved by the relationship of family. This kind of estrangement expressed by the director's emphasis on brush and ink also indirectly reflects the difficulty of immigrating in the city of Istanbul, and it is difficult to truly integrate into the local life, and it is difficult to resolve the embarrassing situation of indifference between family members.
After the winter Istanbul was covered with snow, it seemed to be covered with a cold coat. The huge cruise ship was tilted, lying alone in the port and wrapped in ice. The speeding train passed by, breaking the chilling silence, no one could tell him what to do. Where to go to realize your dreams, you can only wander the snowy streets of Istanbul all day long. Dreams are vague, but there are still dreams, and love is hopeless, but there is still hope. Youshu looks like a useless countryman, but he has what Mamu lost. Ten years ago, Ma Mu was probably in the same situation as Youshu now, bumping into walls everywhere and having no hope of life. Ten years of hard work made his life relatively comfortable, but he lost his dreams and hopes. Spend the day either lying on the couch watching boring TV, or hiding in the studio taking tedious product photos over and over again. When he saw the beautiful flock of sheep in the sunset, he said "God, what a place to photograph!" However, when his cousin asked him if he took off the equipment to take pictures, he hesitated and said "fuck it why bother? ". From his hesitant expression and his emotion towards the beautiful scenery, it can be seen that his love for art photography is not necessary now. . He knows that the pursuit of artistic photography is impossible. If he gets out of the car and takes pictures of this group of beautiful scenery, next time, the beautiful scenery in his eyes is everywhere, but he has no intention of facing it, so why bother doing futile things and adding trouble .
During this period, the film is interspersed with Ma Mu and his ex-wife, Ma Mu and his family, and You Shu and the neighbor girl.
From the conversation between Ma Mu and his ex-wife, we learned that his ex-wife had a miscarriage. Ma Mu blamed himself for this, believing that the miscarriage led to their divorce, but his ex-wife said that it was only the straw that led to the divorce. It can be seen that the emotional trauma accumulated over a long period of time is the root cause of divorce. Ma Mu's loneliness and taciturn personality and his attitude of losing passion for life inevitably affect the marriage. He would drive to the downstairs of his ex-wife in the middle of the night, he would also look at the pictures of his children in front of the photos of his sister's house, and he would also wait in his mother's ward all night. All this shows that Ma Mu still has a warm side. However, he buried this warmth in the depths of his heart, in his thoughts while drinking alone at the bar, and between his fingers that he lit the cigarette he once regarded as shit after Youshu left. We don’t know what happened to Mamu in Istanbul alone for more than ten years, and how his attitude of rejecting people thousands of miles away came into being, but this is by no means an exception. Maybe every immigrant in Istanbul will experience something.
Youshu's work has never been settled, and his admiration for the neighbor girl has grown stronger. Packages such as the stairwell deliberately set aside the cousin, hoping to have the opportunity to be alone with the girl. However, his inferiority complex made him dare not come forward to communicate even if he stood in front of the girl. In the dim stairwell, the eyes of admiration that have been dodging all the time, if they accidentally collide, they will dodge like an electric shock, and those who are ashamed will no longer dare to look at each other. The vulgar, ugly, and inferior countryman also has love. He knows that love is hopeless and futile, but he can't suppress his desire. He can only vent his love through voyeurism and tracking. Why can't this be reminiscent of the situation when Ma Mu first arrived more than ten years ago? It is difficult to have dreams and hopes for love in a poor material life, but I can still persevere. After more than ten years have passed, the vulgarity and ugliness have faded away, and material and love have been obtained. In order to integrate into the local area, people who have lost their dreams are like walking dead, lonely and decadent. Such a person has not really integrated into the local area, and the people he has photographed for ten years have never given him more money.
When Youshu found out that the girl he admired had a lover, his hopes for love were shattered, and the job he could never find made his dream farther and farther away. The inexorable depression made him disheartened, and he wandered in the cold Istanbul dock, staring nostalgically at this place that did not belong to him. It is easy for the audience to think that Ma Mu's dislike of Youshu is a bad habit that cannot be tolerated by Youshu. In fact, even though Ma Mu has lived in the city for many years, his bad habits have not changed. When I left, I smoked cigarettes that I turned into shit. Subconsciously, what he really can't bear is himself, how much You Shu resembles the former self, and when he sees him, he will think of how ugly and vulgar he used to be, which he is unwilling to admit. He suspected that You Shu had stolen his watch, but when he found out that it was a misunderstanding, he did not tell You Shu. He would rather let You Shu bear the psychological pressure of being suspected than to clarify the misunderstanding and bear the psychological sin himself. He didn't want to let Shu Shu realize his dream so easily, after all, when he first came, no one could rely on him, and he didn't come too. The time and again he made trouble for this poor relative with inferiority complex, which was also a mental torture to himself. Maybe, subconsciously, he didn't want the self who was ten years ago to come here.
In the end, Mamu told Yushu in an almost brutal way that he was worthless and did not belong here. He also insulted him by turning over Yushu's bag, which may be the last straw for Yushu's decision to leave Istanbul. The mouse in the room was finally stuck, and when You Shu threw the mouse, he smashed the mouse to the wall, which also symbolized You Shu's hope and dream to die like this mouse. Ma Mu peeped at this scene upstairs, and it also heralded Ma Mu's complete psychological victory, and he successfully stifled Yushu's dream.
Mamu's wife is also leaving Istanbul, his dreams are long gone, the rat who disturbed his life is dead, and so is his cousin. Life has returned to peace again, the winter in Istanbul is about to end, and Mamu will continue to live a lonely and boring life. He can hire prostitutes and watch pornography at any time. This is good for him, this is the life he is used to.
The film uses a lot of long shots, facial close-ups and background close-ups, which have a good effect of rendering loneliness. The fixed shooting method in the long-range conveys a feeling of insignificance of people under the pressure of the environment. Few dialogues can better show the inner emotions of the characters, and the lack of musical elements makes the film more real. Words and music give way to the camera, let the camera speak, the development of the plot depends entirely on the language of the camera, and I have to admire the director's camera skills.
View more about Distant reviews
