I didn't know what to expect from Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Winter Sleep", but the title gave me the right hint. I could feel some introspective vibes from that title that sounded like Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light". That the film ran over three hours did scare me a little, I dreaded the borefest but as soon as it started I knew the guide to my journey would be a competent filmmaker who wouldn't indulge into narrative tricks to entertain me. This is a serious and deep movie, that never feels too long or wordy and that can't be labeled as pretentious because it questions and even mocks that elitist pretension.
Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) could be the alter-ego of Ceylan, a former actor owning a mountaintop hotel in Anatolia, which is far from the tourism-friendly archetypes associated to Turkey. Don't expect a sunny sky and shades of blue from the Mediterranean sea, we are in a place that is dominated by the natural elements, where urban turmoils have no bearing whatsoever on the inhabitants. It's not exoticism but escapism as those who live here are either too poor to move out or voluntarily exiled themselves from the city, out of an urge to find some inner peace or to fulfill some projects, others are just letting their soul hibernating, hoping for sunnier tomorrows.
But isolation can either bring the best or the worst and where Aydin finds inspiration to the columns he writes and his procrastinated project of writing a memoir on Turkish theatre, his younger wife Nihar (Melissa Sozen) and his sister Necla (Demet Akbag) find boredom and desperately look for any possible loophole that can guide them into an oasis of meaning, even artificial. That's the paradox of people trapped together with each one going in one direction, at the end you're estranged to the closest ones. The general idea might sound too pompous but it is handled through powerful conversations where one snarky remark can snowball into more devastating and hurtful comments, revealing the characters' deepest secrets and insecurities.
Aydin is a man who never refuses dialogues, he cares about people and is generally ready to listen. But within his own intellectual certitudes, he passes as an arrogant man, incapable to understand the little people, whereas the tenants of the residences he owns, people who live in religion (while he's the educated and open-minded) and with time both his sister and wife also feel belittled. Though Aydin does nothing offensive and insulting, it's all in his attitude, something that is only partially betrayed through little patronizing thoughts he shares here and there or hides behind his eloquence.
But I make it sound as if the film doesn't deal with a story, there are events that break the relative monotony. A kid throws a rock on Aydin's jeep, he's the son of Ismail, a man who's been put in jail and whose belongings were confiscated by money collectors (umbeknownst to Aydin). Ismael (Nejat Isler with his piercing eyes) reminded me of the lower-class husband in the Iranian film "A Separation", a man incapable to feel empathy toward upper class people no matter how well-intentioned they are. He's a prisoner of his own prejudices and unlike his brother, the local imam, finds refuge in alcohol rather than religion. The brother (Serhat Mustafa Kiliç) constantly sugarcoats his words with syrupy politeness and an exaggerated smile that reinforces Aydin's perception of religious people as hypocrites and bigots.
But in one of the most powerful scenes of the film, the sister blames Aydin for being hypocritical too, and judgmental, he condemns people of religion while having never set a food in a mosque and dilutes his frustration in a vain desire to please some fans. It escalates to the point that Aydin as a defensive mechanism insults her, calling her an eternal malcontent venting her post-divorce anger. Later, a similar conversation occurs when he accuses his wife of being too naïve with her fundraising projects and criticizing her lack of bookkeeping skills. Aydin can't realize that this is less a project than an opportunity to give her life a meaning. But we know a bad guy he's not and "Winter Sleep" is only the chronicle of isolation and how it makes people drive people into spinning in their own private areas, so much privacy that even when people discuss, you never see them in the same frames, an interesting trick conveying a double isolation.
It's an existential condition that Aydin disregards as a luxury, real people have no time for such foolishness; during winter, they have to think of fire, school, food, even hunting. The film takes us to one scene to another where all is up to us is to listen to these people, to their ideas, their perceptions, an inebriated dinner leads a man to quote "Richard III" and rejects conscience as a trick used by cowards. In a parallel scene, when Nihar offers money to Ismail's brother out of guilt-stricken charity, Ismail acts as if her good conscience meant absolutely nothing to him. The film shows the eternal gaps between people who can afford thinking and some who can only resign themselves for better or worse, an imam, an alcoholic or a widower who tolerates adversity.
Another conversation has the women talk about how we can fight evil by letting him act and see if it can self-destruct, Aydin rejects the idea without realizing that it's the exact way people behave, by surrendering to their own demons while others just let the flow of life drown them and don't bother fighting it. It's easier to deal with the evil that governs us than whatever belongs to the other. And that the most meaningful and humbles words are spoken in voice-over makes the ending bittersweet and frustrating, but so relatable. For a film so rich in communication, it's rather infuriating that a few people really communicate.
