Winter Sleep | Little White Lies

Win­ter Sleep

21 Nov 2014 / Released: 21 Nov 2014

Elderly man sitting on rocky hillside surrounded by dry vegetation.
Elderly man sitting on rocky hillside surrounded by dry vegetation.
4

Anticipation.

More Anatolian beauty served Ceylan-style? Lemme at it!

3

Enjoyment.

Was it a Winter Sleep premonition when Elvis sung ‘A little less conversation, a little more action’?

3

In Retrospect.

Rich, beautiful, indulgent, frustrating.

Much philo­soph­i­cal­ly-inclined gab­bing make this Palme d’Or-winning lat­est from Nuri Bilge Cey­lan some­thing of snooze.

If you have three olives, you can eat them from a bag or arrange them on a plate,” says rich hotel own­er, Aydin (Haluk Bil­gin­er), dis­tin­guish­ing between civilised and uncivilised pover­ty with char­ac­ter­is­tic pomp. For Win­ter Sleep, direc­tor Nuri Bilge Cey­lan has chopped his olives into tiny pieces which offers lim­it­ed nutri­tion­al pow­er to three hours 16 min­utes of screen time. The effect is as mad­den­ing as chomp­ing air and try­ing to taste an elu­sive, salty flavour.

It should be empha­sised that this writer adored Ceylan’s pre­vi­ous, Once Upon A Time in Ana­to­lia, defend­ing the sub­lime and slow-mov­ing dra­ma against accu­sa­tions of dull­ness and was pos­i­tive­ly primed to adore this snowy Palme d’Or win­ner. How­ev­er, as Keats called it, truth is beau­ty”. The unfor­tu­nate truth invad­ing Win­ter Sleep is that for all its lofty ideas and mag­nif­i­cent land­scapes, it is often hel­la­cious­ly boring.

Cey­lan is a thought­ful film­mak­er and hasn’t sud­den­ly made a film devoid of qual­i­ty. What makes Win­ter Sleep infu­ri­at­ing is that it’s a tease, stomp­ing into inter­est­ing ter­ri­to­ry then tak­ing a half-an-hour time out to don slip­pers and tell a con­vo­lut­ed tale from its youth. Some­where in the freez­ing Ana­to­lian coun­try­side, poignant obser­va­tions on exis­ten­tial mat­ters echo out, but these are large­ly muf­fled by the cease­less dron­ing of our lead char­ac­ters who talk and talk and talk some more.

There’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with films pow­ered by chat. Richard Linklater’s Before Tril­o­gy trad­ed on dia­logue to charm­ing effect. The prob­lem here is that Cey­lan seems more inter­est­ed in the sub­jects that char­ac­ters are address­ing than the char­ac­ters them­selves. Where both hap­pi­ly over­lap is in the way the film incre­men­tal­ly uncov­ers iden­ti­ties based on the­atri­cal­ly rich speech. One con­flict between Aydin and his young wife, Nihal (Melisa Sözen), comes to a ver­bose head after he mus­cles in on her char­i­ty meet­ing. She argues that it’s the only thing that’s hers, he chuck­les that she doesn’t know how to book-keep and will thank him lat­er for his pro­fes­sion­al inter­ven­tion. It’s an elab­o­rate pow­er game dressed up as a prac­ti­cal concern.

The inter­ac­tions between these two are the film’s strongest moments. For one, out in the beau­ti­ful­ly shot wilder­ness they are locked in with each oth­er – to her unhap­pi­ness and his com­pla­cence – cre­at­ing a very cin­e­mat­ic type of claus­tro­pho­bia. The sec­ond rea­son is that Nihal is crum­bling beneath the end­less ser­mon­is­ing of her hus­band. Aydin isn’t a per­son so much as a con­cep­tu­al embod­i­ment of white male pow­er. Faced with this imper­turbable force, Nihal’s dete­ri­o­ra­tion from sto­icism to emo­tion­al protest attains sym­pa­thy and sym­bol­ism. It’s worth not­ing the inge­nu­ity of hav­ing a lead man who oper­ates on his wife in the same way that the film acts on audi­ences: intel­lec­tu­al suf­fo­ca­tion. There is a rab­bit hole of po-faced analy­sis that could be giv­en over to the parallels.

Pow­er­ful scenes, moments and stretch­es sit tan­ta­lis­ing­ly in what is too often an uncom­fort­ably pro­tract­ed and tire­some ride. Maybe that’s the point but unless you go to the cin­e­ma hop­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to nod off then it’s a rather pun­ish­ing point. Aydin trots around the coun­try­side like a landown­er vis­it­ing his peas­ant ten­ants. These inter­ac­tions start from a posi­tion of social ten­sion, trav­el­ling through delec­table set­ting details and end up hold­ing court drunk­en­ly for longer than a sober judge would decree wise. For all the sea­son­ably appro­pri­ate fires burn­ing in hearths, there’s lit­tle to ignite the cold, inter­minably ver­bal back and forths.

Social com­ment is hint­ed at every­where in the rela­tions between rich and poor, drunk and sober, hus­bands and wives, broth­ers, sis­ters, fathers and sons but the only sto­ry­line to smash through the sleepy ambi­ence starts with a stone and ends with a boy peer­ing through a door.

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