About Dry Grasses Review
Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) is an art teacher serving a mandatory stint at a school in a rural Turkish village. Yearning for the bright lights of Istanbul, he feels sure he’s on the cusp of being granted a transfer, until an accusation of inappropriate conduct from Sevim (Ece Bağcı), a young female student, throws a spanner in the works.
Reading that summary, you might expect About Dry Grasses – the latest film from Nuri Bilge Ceylan – to take the form of a procedural; diving into the facts of the case, assessing various motivations in the quest to discover the truth. In actuality, the accusation is squashed almost immediately. The head of the school district tells Samet he doesn’t need to worry, and that it will all be swept under the rug. Problem solved.
Except, it isn’t. Samet, who did not consider his conduct with Sevim inappropriate, finds his whole world shaken by the accusation. Already frustrated by his life in the village, he becomes even more desperate to leave. He is irritable and cruel to the friends he has made. He starts a relationship with Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a teacher from another local school, and threatens to ruin it with his arrogance. Ceylan’s film tracks the way the accusation ripples through Samet’s life, becoming a character study of a deeply, but perhaps not irreversibly, broken man.
Like most of Ceylan’s movies, About Dry Grasses is a long watch, clocking in over the three-hour mark. Daunting though that runtime is, his approach makes that duration feel necessary, invigorating even; scenes are allowed to run long to explore all kinds of emotional nuances, each one given the time to go places you might not expect. Every pause holds significant weight here, adding dimension to the characters. In many ways – and this is true of a lot of Ceylan’s work – the viewing experience is more akin to the experience of reading a great novel, letting it wrap itself around and envelop you.
Which is not to downplay the film’s visual beauty, which is sometimes overwhelming. Ceylan places his characters is these sweeping exterior landscapes in a way that’s suggestive of their own interior ones; Samet never seems quite so petty as when he’s griping in front of the most beautiful vistas you’ve ever seen. Nevertheless, we’re allowed to see how the relentless isolation of the village, no matter how pretty it may be, would takes its toll on a psyche.
Above all, About Dry Grasses succeeds on an intimate scale, and thanks to actors who sweep us into the life of this lonely place. Deniz Celiloğlu gives a character who makes some terrible choices a touch of humour and a touch of vulnerability too. Ece Bağcı, just fourteen years old when the film was shot, brings an extraordinary, enigmatic interiority for one so young.
It’s Merve Dizdar, however, who runs away with the movie. Every moment she’s on screen, she’s fully engaged, suggesting a whole history and outlook and set of hopes and dreams of which we’re seeing only a fraction. As Samet becomes increasingly unbearable, too busy longing to escape that he can’t see all he has in front of him, it’s the radiance of Dizdar, more than anything else, than underlines just what a fool he is.
★★★★
