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57 out of 66 people found the following review useful: Excellent adult cinema, 12 August 2006 Author: Paul Martin from Melbourne, Australia
This film was really impressive (I agree with everything localdj2001 said), and much better than I expected. I saw it at the Melbourne Film Festival to a capacity audience.Some people cannot enjoy a film if they cannot feel for the characters. If so, this is not the film for you. The characters are all flawed, and not particularly likable (kudos to the director/actor for allowing himself and his wife to be portrayed in this manner).We have a reasonable size established Turkish community in Melbourne. This film introduced me to a more modern view of the Turkish that we don't see here. Culturally, it was very interesting.The film reeks with emotional honesty. It is mature, adult cinema. The story is somewhat cryptic as there are aspects of a collapsing relationship that are never revealed. But unfolding events reveal that everything is not what it seems. And real life is like this - we see something and think we know, but we only know the little glimpse we have seen.What is said in this film is sparse but interesting. And what is not said is just as interesting. There are very long takes, some of which nothing much seems to happen. In others, there is much happening.The title is very clever because it adds weight to the background of the film, which is the changing seasons. The cinematography was really stunning, especially at the end. Lighting was terrific. The film lingers long after the credits. This is the first film I have seen by this director, but he is surely very accomplished. If very high quality, intelligent, artful European cinema is your taste, go see this.
51 out of 61 people found the following review useful: A Turkish Cinematic Masterpiece, 30 May 2006 Author: localdj2001 from United Kingdom
Without giving away any detail, from the plot of the movie, I can declare to cinema goers that this film is one to seek and watch. The film is very intelligently directed, and the acting is superb.Not since 'Gegen Die Wand' has Turkish cinema shown it self capable of delivering such a movie.The acting is also significant, and the way the lead actors portray the indifference and backdrops in middle-class Turkish society is subliminal.I recommend this movie to anyone who has a keen appetite for European/Turkish cinema.Bravo.
38 out of 42 people found the following review useful: I'll largely remember Climates as the movie, it looks absolutely flat-out stunning, 10 October 2006 Author: chadonline from United States
Ceylan's previous feature, Distant, won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; its glowing reception cemented his status as a major contemporary auteur. In Climates, Ceylan takes us to stunning locations all across Turkey in what may be his most personal film to date - in addition to directing and starring, he also wrote and edited. Filmed with his signature contemplative style, it is a highly subdued, deliberately-paced work that conveys more through silence than through exposition. The cinematography by Gökhan Tiryaki achieves a new high for high-definition video with its refined, poetic images, while Ceylan's precise, beautiful compositions give the film a characteristically elegiac tone. This achingly poignant film subtly captures the emotional tremors that ripple through a fallow relationship.
33 out of 39 people found the following review useful: perfection, 13 October 2006 Author: ozgeeren from United States
I saw climates yesterday at the NY film festival.Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a director who uses himself or his relatives to act in his own movies. In Climates he(Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and his real life wife (Ebru Ceylan) are the main characters and his mother and father are his real life parents as well. In his role, he is a professor at a university and his wife is in visual arts. During their trip in Kas which is a very hot place located in southern Turkey these two fall out and their conversations almost come to an end in this hot climate.This not sharing much leads up to the husband asking for their separation.As they got back the regret the husband feels takes him to find his wife with a crew she was working with in the beautiful but very cold and snowy city of Agri located in Eastern Turkey.The climate changes and so does their minds..This movie is more of analyzing the relationships between people. His success comes from how he could reflect the depth of his characters and their emotions and minds with very little conversation.Nuri Bilge Ceylan's style is based on a strong plot. He focuses more on human relations with very little happening around them but more importantly what is happening inside of them and between them. I enjoyed every second of the movie with curiosity.I recommend this movie highly.
12 out of 13 people found the following review useful: A Unique Film-Definitely not for all Audiences, 14 December 2006 Author: lozden from Turkey
A director-as an artist-may choose to tell his story by using different parameters i.e.grand dialogues,eloquent treatment of scenery,costumes,soundtrack and sometimes visual effects. Another may choose to tell his/her story using spare plot,minimal dialogue,long still shoots and atmosphere.Three-time Cannes winner director,actor,photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan follows the latter mode of cinematic expression and has formulated an attitude/approach where 'how it is being told' rather than 'what is being told' is the focal point.A sequel to Uzak,Iklimler,very simply is about a middle-aged academic still writing his thesis and his younger wife(director himself and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan)who move through the seasons in their marriage.As the plot moves on-from summer to fall then to winter-we see the scenery and locations change in parallel with their inner conflicts.The couple cannot reconcile; separation and break-up is unavoidable at the end.Ceylan,with almost a Tarkovskian approach tells his story in the manner of a true auteur he is.
14 out of 18 people found the following review useful: Almost excellent, 9 November 2006 Author: ufuk_eltem from Turkey
The film is developed on a university teacher who has unstable relation with women. The film is so valuable for the man and women who don't understand each other. Excellent description of average man and woman behaviors. It shows that there are no reasonable causes of feeling to others depending on his or her character or their behaviors. Scenes are like paintings with human figures. Must be watched with patience and in rest. Lonely people can feel the sense better. The Director's other movies especially "Uzak"/Distant are recommended to feel the atmosphere better. Players, especially the amateur ones (in fact there is no professional one) so successful.
13 out of 17 people found the following review useful: A great film - wonderful mood and character study, 26 January 2007 Author: vandenbu from United States
This film, beautiful to see, was a wonderful character study. Slow, but that was part of the charm. Perhaps Bergman inspired some of it. But this was better than Bergman as far as I was concerned. I think it dealt with changing gender relations in current modernizing Turkey as well-- in ways that were not at all simplistic. The metaphor of the seasons behind the narrative is compelling, but does not dominate. The women's characters were well drawn. In some ways, the woman we expect to be the most independent is not completely so. The woman who does achieve independence is remarkably feminine at the same time. So good, I had to see it again. It didn't lose anything at all on second viewing.
11 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Disillusioned Istanbulites swim around each other like small islands, avoiding the real problems in their lives. Which, really, aren't that large at all., 13 October 2006 Author: elif84-1 from Chicago, US
I just saw the film here in Chicago as part of the city's International Film Fest, and I have a few feelings left hanging around. True, Ceylan's films tend to be slow and he often leaves his character's unsatisfyingly shallow (see "Uzak," an even slower film than this one). But what leaves me intrigued is just this - the fact that he doesn't develop his characters. In "Climates," there are many close up shots which linger, leaving the characters suspended on the screen to be themselves, and these script-less glimpses of them speak volumes to me actually. So yes, in terms of how much is GIVEN to us as an audience, the characters are wanting. But in terms of how much we can construct in our minds, I feel the sky's the limit. I also found the generational difference between Bahar, the young wife, and the other few characters we're introduced to to be quite heavy. For while the other few people we see are all disillusioned by life and lazily struggle with it in the safe realms of their relative bourgeois lives, she seems to be the only one who sees something wrong with the whole picture. The catch is that while she sees through it, she also feels disillusioned by how wrong all the wrongs are, and so she keeps it to herself and simply starts crying. Interspersed throughout the film are subtle focuses on tiny details, like a bee, or snow flakes, which really highlight a rather poetic quality to the film. Overall I found the film to be falsely shallow. Audiences with short attention spans be warned!
4 out of 4 people found the following review useful: RIch and Rewarding, 17 July 2008 Author: frankenbenz from Sydney, Australia
The films of Michelangelo Antonioni will either bore you to death or captivate you in the most subtle of ways. I fall into the latter category and am profoundly influenced by his work and the filmic conventions integral to them. It was my discovery of Antonioni's work that led to my discovery of New German Cinema, both of which ultimately shaped the way I watched and interpreted films. Brought up on a steady diet of Hollywood movies, I was conditioned to be a passive viewer, one swept away by movies made solely for entertainment purposes. In many ways I still am that little boy who gets lost in the fantasy world on the silver screen, but as an adult I've learned the films that truly make me feel alive are the ones forcing me to be an active participant in what is being projected before me. In other words, films that challenge me by asking questions in lieu of providing absolutes.Nuri Bilge Ceylan's is an Antonioni disciple and his 2006 film Climates is unmistakably an Antonioni clone. From the story of a couple's dissolving relationship on vacation (one part L'Avventura one part La Notte) right down to the compositions of every shot and the very deliberate pacing, Ceylan wears his influence with pride. Cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki beautifully frames every shot, where the meticulous compositions are allowed to play out in patient long takes. As it is with Antonioni's films, the minimal use of editing allows the viewer to study things they normally wouldn't get a chance to even consider. Things like landscape, diegetic sounds and subtleties expressed by the actors, all take on heightened significance where, ultimately, this minutiae plays a crucial role filling in the blanks predominant throughout the film. In other words, films like Ceylan's and Antonioni's challenge their viewers to think, to read between the lines and to actively search for context, meaning and subtext within every frame of their films. As much as I love to revisit the thrills of my youth with standard Hollywood fare, nothing bests a filmgoing experience where I'm not only expected to think and feel as an adult, but am forced to act like one. What an interesting world we'd live in if the blockbusters were all films designed for adults.http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: No plot, bad dialogue, uninteresting characters, 1 September 2008 Author: arabtanguera from United States
If you enjoy a movie made up of five-minute close-ups of actors' faces, the sounds of flies and bees, and very little more, this is the movie for you. There is no plot or characterization and some pointless dialogue in the first 45 minutes. I don't know what happens next, because I stopped watching at this point. There are many good Turkish movies out there; this is not one of them.The story, if there is one, is about the breakup of two miserable people, neither of them remarkable in any way. We do not learn much about them except that they are unhappy. One thing that I enjoyed, but that does not make the movie worth seeing, is the natural landscape.
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