The Wild Pear Tree – first look review

On paper, the 2018 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val com­pe­ti­tion line-up caused a cer­tain amount of light con­ster­na­tion among those wor­ried that a push for diver­si­ty and a search for new names might low­er the qual­i­ty bar set by pre­vi­ous edi­tions. Yet, the laud­ed male auteur axis of recent years was start­ing was get­ting stale, and it was obvi­ous that these direc­tors were in the mix not because of what they’d made, but because of who they were. But the gam­ble paid off, as this year, the fes­ti­val offered up its strongest com­pe­ti­tion in a decade, as the selec­tion cri­te­ri­on clear­ly focused more intent­ly on prod­uct rather than personality.

This year it seemed as if the esteemed Turk­ish film­mak­er Nuri Bilge Cey­lan had man­aged to walk between the rain­drops of this out-with-the-old edict, as his new film, The Wild Pear Tree, was dropped into the line-up as a late edi­tion and, rumour has it, with mate­r­i­al excised by request of the selec­tion com­mit­tee. The very idea that a film might require a trim or a prune infers that the director’s full, unex­pur­gat­ed vision was not quite up to scratch – or per­haps deemed a less­er work than his 2014 Palme d’Or win­ner, Win­ter Sleep. The film even­tu­al­ly received its pre­mière in the final slot of the final day of the fes­ti­val, offer­ing an already-knack­ered press corps the unwel­come prospect of a long, late night of the soul before a snifter of rosé and off to bed.

It becomes obvi­ous after about an hour in to Ceylan’s remark­able, 188-minute opus that there’s no way that he’s in the mix this year from cap­i­tal­is­ing on his past rela­tion­ship with the fes­ti­val brass. He’s back with a big, bold mas­ter­piece under his arm, his great­est work to date, and the finest film to play across the entire line-up. Cey­lan orig­i­nal­ly set his stall as a mak­er of opaque human dra­mas pow­ered pri­mar­i­ly by their stark visu­als: pristine­ly framed, painter­ly land­scapes, or roman­tic rela­tion­ships which appeared to devel­op with­out the neces­si­ty of dia­logue. His 2011 film, Once Upon a Time in Ana­to­lia, marked a tran­si­tion­al moment, fram­ing a night­time hunt for a mur­der vic­tim as a ver­bose dis­qui­si­tion on polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and male neuroses.

With Win­ter Sleep, he altered his tack fur­ther by cen­tring the film around lengthy, often cir­cuitous dia­logue pas­sages where the the artic­u­la­tion of words and the poet­ic aspect of com­mu­ni­ca­tion stood in for the pic­to­r­i­al beau­ty of yore. The Wild Pear Tree cap­i­talis­es on the best of every­thing that Cey­lan does, while also man­ag­ing to offer some­thing new; name­ly a mea­sure of lev­i­ty and caus­tic humour which serves to enhance his eru­dite pos­tu­la­tions on the way we live. There are no jokes in the film (actu­al­ly, there is one), yet in the intri­ca­cies of the writ­ing he man­ages to mag­ni­fy the com­ic aspects of every­day inter­ac­tion though the ways in which peo­ple speak rather than what they’re actu­al­ly say­ing. He orches­trates inflec­tion and into­na­tion as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er would adjust light lev­els or focus.

The film tells the sto­ry of an angry young man named Sinan (Dogu Demirkol) who returns to his rur­al home­town after com­plet­ing a degree in cre­ative writ­ing and har­bour­ing the aspi­ra­tion of get­ting his nov­el pub­lished: named, The Wild Pear Tree. The plot, such as it is, chron­i­cles the con­ver­sa­tions he has with mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, local cul­tur­al dig­ni­taries, old girl­friends, an Imam, and any­one who will lis­ten to him blast the sor­ry state of things. His father, Idris (Murat Cem­cir), is an avun­cu­lar school teacher who has par­layed the fam­i­ly nest into his gam­bling addic­tion, and at one point even attempts to demon­strate the fun­ny side of return­ing home with the elec­tric­i­ty cut off.

Sinan sees in his father as an omi­nous vision of his future self, a depres­sive down-and-out falling between the cracks of a soci­ety which seems to sup­press indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and cre­ative self-reliance. His nov­el, a per­son­al, poet­ic reflec­tion on his home­town which eludes the val­ues which might make it com­mer­cial­ly viable (as in, it could help bring tourists to the area), becomes a per­son­al obses­sion. He scrapes togeth­er the print­ing and pub­lish­ing costs while attempt­ing to keep his dig­ni­ty in tact and the funds hid­den from his slip­pery father.

There’s a nov­el­is­tic aspect to the film, and Sinan him­self feels like one of the great mod­ern movie char­ac­ters: an angry, inquis­i­tive indi­vid­u­al­ist racked with con­fu­sion and des­o­la­tion, who scrab­bles to find excus­es to be proud of his fam­i­ly and his birth­place, but can only see venal­i­ty, exploita­tion, small-mind­ed­ness and repres­sion masked as tra­di­tion. Each con­ver­sa­tion offers a crescen­do of tor­ment as he refus­es to blind­ly accept the advice being giv­en to him, often fir­ing back ques­tions in an attempt to over­come his oppo­nent through intel­lec­tu­al bat­tery. And each time, it’s thrilling to watch.

As the film spi­rals towards its cli­max, Cey­lan some­how pulls all the var­i­ous strands, talk­ing points and dis­parate ideas togeth­er and con­dens­es them down to a pri­mal fusion of sub­lime sad­ness. There’s some­thing mirac­u­lous about a film which doesn’t appear to be dri­ving towards a finite end point, but some­how man­ages to arrive at one which is so per­fect­ly judged, so sur­pris­ing, so mov­ing and so tran­scen­dent. Ignore the stig­ma of the run­time, don’t be put off by its talk-heavy approach, for­get the fact that it has sub­ti­tles, reject the notion that its lit­er­ary nature is a code for bore­dom, and accept this enrich­ing mas­ter­piece into your lives. Cannes class of 2018: you did good.