Review: About Dry Grasses

Image courtesy of Janus Films.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films are frequently long - his latest being well over three hours - and talkative dramas that examine weighty subject matter - such as good and wrongdoing (in his Palm d'Or winner "Winter Sleep") or the nature of truth (his 2012 masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia") - through conversation.

In his latest, "About Dry Grasses," Ceylan asks us to spend more than three hours in the company of a man who is, let's face it, unpleasant and often unlikable. Thankfully, great drama does not require feeling sympathetic towards a fictional character.

The film's lead character is art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), who has been assigned to work in a remote location in east Turkey, despite wanting to live in a more metropolitan area such as Istanbul, and who wears a condescending smirk on his face most of the time. He's equally friendly with the Turkish regime - he cavorts with local military men - and the opposition, namely a left-wing woman named Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a former military woman who lost a leg in a bomb blast, whom he befriends later in the film. It is she who calls Samet out and points out the zone of moral cowardice he inhabits that involves approving when a good thing gets done, but acting as if he wants nothing to do with politics.

A conundrum involving Samet, Nuray, and Kenan (Musab Ekici), Samet's roommate and closest thing to a best friend, arises late in the picture, but an earlier bit of drama dominates the film's first half. Samet shows outsized favorable attention to a girl named Sevim (Ece Bagci) whom he believes is smarter than the other students, whom he often berates cruelly. There's nothing to suggest that Samet has done anything to overtly cause harm to this girl, but he still crosses a line.

There's a scene early in the film in which the question of lying or telling the truth - and whether it's necessary to always tell the truth when feelings are involved - is discussed among some teachers in a faculty lounge in regard to a merchant who was selling fake goods. Samet believes that one must always tell things the way they are - people's feelings be damned - and this is obvious during a particularly unkind moment when he criticizes his students and tells them they'll likely not rise above their humble existences and during another scene in which Nuray asks Samet not to tell Kenan, who obviously likes her, about a night they spent together, which Samet goes out and immediately does afterward.

The most fascinating sequence in the picture is a long, dialogue-driven scene when Nuray invites Samet and Kenan over the dinner and, for once, the former lies and fails to mention it to the latter. This is the night that will end with them sleeping together, but first the two debate politics or, rather, whether one should become involved in community advocacy. Nuray calls Samet out over his selfishness and lack of interest in getting involved in the world, arguing that he hides behind a mask of faux politeness when, in fact, he doesn't want to admit that he cares for no one other than himself.

One of the film's ironic touches are the photographs that Samet takes of the town's inhabitants in the form of tableaux vivants, which appear lovingly shot; however, it's clear that Samet cares little about the subjects in the photos and thinks of most of the people in the town as uneducated and simple. 

There's also a perplexing moment late in the picture - and immediately before Samet and Nuray sleep together - that I won't give away, but it's something akin to breaking the fourth wall. It's as if to suggest that amid all this back and forth about the nature of lies versus truth, we shouldn't forget that the entire production - a film in which actors are portraying people other than themselves - is itself a lie.

Ceylan's finest film, in my book, remains the mesmerizing "Anatolia," but "About Dry Grasses" is another strong and often fascinating look at what truth actually means, and how it should be wielded. For moviegoers of the patient variety, this film will likely cast a spell.