About Dry Grasses

A photographer with intellectual pretensions, Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) can’t wait to serve his fourth and final year teaching elementary school in a rural backwater in eastern Turkey. Returning from a too-brief vacation, he’s embroiled in a controversy when his favourite student, Sevim (Ece Bagci), accuses him of inappropriate behaviour. Meanwhile he’s drawn to a colleague from a nearby school, Nuray (Merve Dizdar); more so, when she seems to favour his roommate, Kenan…

Over the last two decades Nuri Bilge Ceylan has established himself as one of the masters of world cinema, renowned for films of Chekhovian subtlety and depth (Winter Sleep; The Wild Pear Tree; Once Upon a Time in Anatolia). His latest is a lacerating portrait of a narcissist who seemingly can’t stop himself form sowing discord and disaster. Comparisons to Lolita are justified; About Dry Grasses compels us to identify with a creep, even as it asks pointed questions about subjectivity, empathy and deep-rooted cultural divides. That Samet can also be read as a stand in for Ceylan himself (also an acclaimed photographer) gives some indication of the film’s considerable sophistication.

Structured like a quietly grand novel, subtle and elliptical, Ceylan’s film unfolds with Chekhovian grace and a cutting understanding of character.

Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

In About Dry Grasses, Ceylan is asking a vital question of himself as well as the audience: What does it mean to be engaged in the world? And if you choose to back away and watch, rather than become involved, is it self-protection, superiority or just cowardice?About Dry Grasses clocks in at nearly three and a half hours, but the running time feels right. It has the warp and woof of an epic in miniature.

Alissa Wilkerson, New York Times

About Dry Grasses may be unhurried, with languid steppe-by-steppe pacing and long, luxuriant, exquisitely sculpted conversations, but it is also nimble, alert, and alive in ways that seem to have taken Ceylan himself by surprise.

Justin Chang, New Yorker

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