Joyce Glasser reviews About Dry Grasses (July 26, 2024) Cert. 15, 198 mins.
The ninth film from the great 65-year-old Turkish director (co-writer, co-editor and producer) Nuri Bilge Ceylan has much in common with his previous films. Over a long running time, a flawed, yet fascinating male character is involved in a talky drama that becomes so utterly mesmerising it never seems quite long enough.
About Dry Grasses begins with a signature shot at odds with the title, which is not the only sly move in the film. Under a depressing grey sky Samet, (Deniz Celiloğlu) the art teacher at a backwater school in Eastern Anatolia, returns from the Christmas break, trudging through the snow to the home he shares with local teacher Kenan (Musab Ekici). The snow remains on this farming community for so long that you feel the suspense in awaiting those dry grasses to unlock their meaning.
Samet is in his fourth year of a posting he constantly complains about, longing for a coterie of like-minded, elevated souls in Istanbul. It seems odd that a small, rundown school in a remote village can afford a full time art teacher, particularly when we never see the class doing any art. Samet, who has a tempestuous streak, projects an image of defiant self-righteousness that belies his insecurity. He admits he’s not a good artist, but Ceylan provides a montage of his stunning photographs of the local population that seem to see right into their souls.
When Samet and Kenan are called before the regional director of education it is not for a complaint about their teaching or art skills, but for being too close to the students. Though the complaint is buried with a warning, Samet is disappointed that the complainant can only be beautiful 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bağcı) whose crush on Samet he has indulged with small gifts and too much attention in class.
In one of several betrayals in the film, where truth is hidden for reasons that back-fire, when Samet obtains a confiscated love letter that Sevim had written but never delivered, he pretends to have burnt it without having read it. Sevim has reason to doubt this lie, but Samet sticks to his story the relationship turns sour.
A new relationship, with English teacher Nuray (Merve Dizdar) who works at a larger school, turns into a love triangle that drives a wedge between Keran and Samet. Samet is fixed up with Nuray, an attractive, intelligent woman with a limp who he considers of little interest, particularly with Istanbul in reach. Attracted by Nuray’s photograph, and Samet’s reminder that they are both from Alawi villages, Keran agrees that the three should go out sightseeing together so he can meet Nuray.
But the more time Samet spends with Nuray, who tells the men that she lost her leg in a suicide bombing, the more envious he becomes of her relationship with Kenan who is, he learns, teaching her to drive. Samet orchestrates what appears to be a chance meeting with Nuray in town and does not tell Keran that Nuray has invited both men to dinner when her parents are away.
After complimenting Nuray on her paintings, including portraits which hang on the walls of a spacious, comfortable apartment, Samet puts down his absent rival by expressing disbelief that Nuray could find meaning in Keran’s face. Nuray retorts: ‘you never know where you’ll find meaning,’ a line, like many in the film that resonate with Samet’s photographs of Sevim and foreshadows the meaning Samet finds in dry grasses.
Samet arrives alone at Nuray’s with flowers and an excuse for Kenan, but Nuray, like Sevim, does not believe him. Later in the evening Nuray confronts Samet about why not invite Keran. Staring into her eyes he replies, ‘why do you think?’
Here, we are jolted by a Ceylan’s decision to break the fourth wall, a signal perhaps that this is not a love story, but a Bildungsroman. The intense dinner conversation preceding the pair’s intimacy is a profound, sharp-witted debate that highlights the chasm between the two, narrowed only by the fluency of the discussion.
Nury, a committed socialist who chooses to remain in her home town with her parents rather than follow the brain drain to Istanbul, points out that, ‘complaining doesn’t change anything; you have to get involved’ to change what you object to. At one point Samet says, ‘history recalls the weariness of hope’ but Nuray points out that he is a product of that history, and hope is the driving force for humanity.’
After the two have polished off a bottle of wine, Nuray asks Samet a series of questions to ‘avoid wasting time getting to know someone not worth knowing.’ Nuray instructs him to ‘answer the question however you understand it, when she asks him ‘what kind of a person are you.’ She adds, ‘how you understand it is an answer in itself.’ Prevaricating, Samet says, ‘Shall I tell the truth or try to make you happy?’
Later, during the end of school celebrations that mark Samet’s departure, he calls Sevim into his office determined to hear her confession. In Samet’s questioning are echoes of Nuray’s, but they reveal more about him than about the unresponsive girl.
‘I was wondering if Sevim wanted to tell me anything,’ he begins. ‘If you say you don’t know that’s also an answer’ and explains that no answer would trouble him. ‘I’d feel a bit stupid for having cared about you because I still haven’t figured people out, haven’t understood who’s worthy or not, who’s special or not.’
Before Samet’s departure he, Keran and Nuray go on a final sightseeing excursion. Samet leaves them behind to climb a hill, gripping his feet on the ‘nameless, humble dried grasses’ that suddenly interest him because ‘they are perceived as worthless like my life here.’ Samet’s tendency to judge people and places by their perceived worthiness echoes Nuray’s comment about where one finds meaning. Is the teacher searching for meaning in a young girl’s eyes, looking at her for ‘something I couldn’t find in myself?’ And is that something hope, if only the weariness of hope?
For Samet solidarity is incompatible with the freedom he craves. But is alienating everyone who might be unworthy of some nebulous criteria a path to freedom or to unbearable solitude?
