About Dry Grasses Layers Contradictions Of Lonely Characters Desperately Seeking Purpose In Life

Our contributing critic Prahlad Srihari sampled the best among world cinema's most recent offerings at the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes). This is the second in a four-part series of reviews from the festival. Read Part 1 here.

*

IN the dramatic centrepiece of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, a dinner turns into a debate. Two teachers, from neighbouring Turkish villages, face off over matters of civic engagement, moral obligation to activism, and “the weariness of hope.” Nuray (Merve Di̇zdar) lost her right leg in the 2015 terrorist bombing at a pro-Kurdish peace march but hasn’t lost her courage. She remains steadfastly committed to her idealism. Samet (Deni̇z Celi̇loğlu) is a chronic complainer who would rather run away to greener pastures than try to effect change where he is. He knows he is no hero and doesn’t insist otherwise. In fact, self-serving antiheroism affords him the luxury to complain from the sidelines without doing anything. As Nuray challenges Samet’s cynicism, Ceylan shoots their back-and-forth across a dinner table like a heated game of rhetorical ping-pong. The clash between her passion and his disillusion reveals the fault lines that exist not only in Turkey but all around the world. The clincher lies in how Ceylan folds an agreement to disagree into a strange but not unexpected seduction.

Such dynamic scenes of extended dialogue are par for the course in Ceylan’s films, near as much as the pristine long shots of the gorgeous Anatolian landscapes. About Dry Grasses is by turns talky and quiet as it layers the contradictions of its lonely characters, all feeling stuck and all desperate to find meaning and control in their lives. Ceylan wields the camera, much like a novelist does a pen, creating a powerful sense of place, enriching characters with psychological depth and mapping their inner worlds. His stories have often been home to petulant douchebags masking their insecurities behind their intellect.

Samet is the latest to share said pedigree. If you were to run into this deeply embittered man outside of the film, a few minutes could make you feel like you have lost a day. Yet, despite his relentless unpleasantness, the 196-minute running time glides by. Samet is a 30-something schoolteacher who has been stationed in a perennially snow-covered village in Anatolia as part of his mandatory civil service. When we meet him, he has already been there for years, teaching children about art by day and drinking with the local layabouts by night. All the same, he has held onto his urban outsider status in this remote countryside, like a quilted coat for comfort. The desperate wait for a transfer to Istanbul has left him jaundiced.

There is a nasty streak to Samet. When accused of inappropriate conduct at school, he turns on his favourite student in the blink of an eye, going so far as to shame her in front of her peers. Later, when his housemate and colleague Kenan (Musab Ekici) starts to court Nuray, his feelings towards her change, from passive interest to furtive desire. The comedy comes from the cruelty, from Ceylan’s unflattering framing of a petty man who doesn’t even bother to disguise his self-serving behaviour. Celi̇loğlu’s face can be read like an open book. Neither the actor nor the director court our sympathy for Samet. But it is impossible to deny the profound bitterness that feeds and poisons his fragile male ego. The words he loads with bile to hurt those around him only end up distilling all the insecurities he keeps locked up under his misanthropic facade.

Before moving into much more heated territory, the film begins as a classroom drama. Samet may not like most people around him, but he does harbour a special affection for Sevim (Ece Bağcı), a bright young student he tends to favour in class and sometimes gifts trinkets. The feeling is mutual. Sevim too treats Samet like her favourite teacher. She may even be nursing an innocent crush. Things take a turn when a love letter is confiscated and accusations of inappropriate behaviour are reported against Samet and Kenan. Once Samet learns Sevim is one of the two accusers, paranoia takes over. Suppressed feelings come spiralling out. Samet takes out his frustrations on the students, with Sevim facing the worst of the hostility. This extended epilogue sets in motion a film of conflicts and fallouts that reach beyond the classroom.

With his ego bruised by an accusation he can’t make sense of, Samet looks for outlets to heal wherever he can. At first, when he meets Nuray, a woman as generous and hopeful as he is selfish and scornful, his feelings for her are lukewarm at best, in part because of his looming move to Istanbul. Believing Kenan will be a better match for her, Samet introduces the two to each other. On seeing the two connect, he begins to pursue her on the sly, motivated more by spite than anything else. Ceylan tracks his courtship as a charged push-pull affair, culminating in debate and sex. To expose the performative nature of Samet’s disaffection, he has the character walk out of the film through the soundstage to a bathroom to take a Viagra before walking back into the bedroom of Nuray’s apartment — a playful touch alerting us to the artifice as Wes Anderson so often does.

For all his protestations, Samet strangely feels at home in a cold, remote village, a world favourable to much-needed self-reflection. Each time Samet and Kenan hike to the mountaintop to collect drinking water, drop by drop, the wintry landscape seems to put all their trials, their grievances and their eternal bachelorhood into perspective. As if to give the viewer a breather from Samet’s overbearing presence, Ceylan intersperses a montage of portraits of the villagers, young and old, finding beauty and hope where Samet doesn’t. Snow may nip all that wishes to bloom in the bud. But not hope. However little of it there may be.

About Dry Grasses was screened at the 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) as part of its Contemporary World Cinema Section.