A deserved winner at Cannes (1)*

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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Easter Day

* Spoilers ahead - read at your peril, if you have not viewed the film *

It is interesting that the pace of a film can change as much as that of this film did to-night from its first viewing - maybe I was more tired, but, in an unfolding that appeared to have had much time in which I could relish it, much seemed to telescope**, and I found a lot of detail to reabsorb.

Knowing that the doctor (Muhammet Uzuner), the police chief (Yilmaz Erdogan) and the prosecutor (Taner Birsel) were the main ones to watch, I was, for example, much more aware of the first of these sitting behind the second, and how he really only started opening up when talking to the chief's driver for the night, his subordinate called Arab (Arab Ali) - there, as on first sight, the fact that the person who did the subtitles did not follow convention did not help, although I did better, as it is usual to put words in italics when they are spoken by someone not in shot (and there were other pecularities, later on, that meant that I was too busy working out who was speaking to have time to read words before they disappeared).

That said, merely playing detective because one knows the end of the film already (not an inappropriate thing to do when a man (Kenan) has confessed to a killing, maybe murder, as we never really know what he claims happened, and, at a significant moment - when, I think, none of the police are in earshot - his fellow suspect (Ramazan), before silenced by Kenan, calls out that he committed the act) does not usually make the duration of scenes seem shorter, whereas here it turned it into a quite differently paced narrative, although still beautiful.

Where, though, that quicker perception of time was disadvantageous was that the Tarkovksy-like moments, when the wind is moving the crops, or the trees, as if in the guise of a character, seem less naturally poetic, and more overtly arty. In the same way, when Doctor Cemal, who is relieving himself, finds a carved face suddenly revealed by the lightning in the rock level with his own it seemed more contrived, and less convincing, seen for the second time, but these are purely momentary, and did not detract from the whole effect of the piece.

Some have exaggerated the length - or other aspects - of the sequence where we hear dialogue over shots of one apple from those shaken from a tree by Arab, following it as it rolls down a slope and then down a stream, and, although it, too, seemed a little shorter, it still had its power. As did what has been described as an epiphany, when the mukhtar's young daughter Cemile (Cansu Demirci) brings around glasses of tea, lighted by the oil-lamp in the centre of the tray.

On one very obvious level, the film takes us from what turns out to be a view through a window of a living body (Yasar, with the two men who, between them and unseen, kill and inexpertly bury him) to the same one being found and exhumed, and to the indignity of autopsy: where we are left is with the doctor and Yasar's widow Gülnaz, the one watching the other, from the autopsy room, as she walks into the distance with her son, before he turns around, and we are looking for a few seconds at that closing window, then there is a blackout on which the credits come up, but the noise of the school playground (to the left as the widow walks away) and the liquid sounds of the autopsy play over it.

Chief of Police Naci, looking at Prosecutor Nusret in his element as he gives - for dictation onto a laptop - his report from the crime investigation scene, says that a master of revels is the thing to be. Unseen, except by his excellent work, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is such a master, and, in this more intimate screening (screen 3 at the Arts Picturehouse), it was good that the humour came out of moments such as the sergeant being pedantic about distances and jurisdictions, and everyone blaming everyone else for not having a body-bag (and what they then have to resort to), as well as the shock that an autopsy was to be shown, and how affronted Naci is by what Kenan and Ramazan have done to the body.


A little more at A deserved winner at Cannes (2)...


End-notes

* Not that I dare suggest that anything unmeritorious wins!

** Lewis Carroll, in one of the Alice books, brought us this usage.


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