Known for ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA/’11 (not seen here), Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to that region for this lengthy, but involving study of Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a teacher reaching the end of his rope and the end of his compulsory service at a snowbound rural High School. Three and a half hours of it, with a difficult character who starts sympathetically but turns prickly and self-centered as our guide to petty squabbles and rivalries among students & staff. Mr. Chips he ain’t. With fellow teacher & roommate Kenan, he receives a complaint on their attention to certain students. Nothing seems really out of order, only encouragements to class achievers. But after a routine (and degrading) bag-check by the principal & lead teacher finds a few harmless personal items (a diary, a lipstick, a secret note that Samet holds onto from a girl in class he favors), this ignites a mess of misunderstandings. Nothing really comes of it (nothing ever does in this hideaway location) and everyone moves on . . . yet don’t. Meanwhile, the two men turn into quasi-rivals over an English teacher from another school. A sadder, but wiser type who lost the lower half of her right leg in a terrorist bombing. Something worth pursuing when you’re all but certain to leave at the end of the semester? Quotidian stuff, yet loaded with bitterness and possibilities to, at least, one up your roommate. What a strangely unsatisfying life the men find themselves stuck in. Beautifully acted (the amputee, Merve Dizdar, exceptional), and often stunningly shot in very simple long takes. Ceylan, like the teachers, always pushing against rigid rules of no-frills filmmaking, at one point leaving studio artifice to wander backstage until finding a way back onto his set. A more Brechtian than Brooksian move to pull back the studio curtain.*
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The reference, just in case you’ve forgotten, is to the finale of Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES/’74.
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