Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:57 pm 
Online
Site Admin

Joined: Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:50 pm
Posts: 4859
Location: California/NYC
Image
MUHAMMET UZUNER AND ERCAN KESAL IN KÜF

Walking the railroad tracks in Anatolia

In this Turkish-German production, the protagonist Basri, played by the compellingly opaque Ercan Kesal, is a withdrawn 55-year-old widower nearing retirement from a job with the railroad, minutely checking the condition of rural tracks in lengthy daily walks among the low-rolling Anatolian hills. So he spends his days in the outback looking for cracks on the line. But 18 years since hthe disappearance of his son Seyfi, he still writes twice-monthly letters to the government appealing for information about his son. He is so unpolitical he tells the local police chief he's never voted. But Seyfi was an activist and is likely to have been snuffed out during protests of the Nineties. Protests of mothers took place, Aydin has noted in interviews, and his making this film was primarily a matter of "conscience." An new adversary for Basri, with whom he has a memorably long scene at the station, is police inspector Murat (Muhammet Uzuner). It is evident that over the years Basri's unwillingness to be silent has caused him to be repeatedly tortured in the cellar of the local police headquarters. Küf is a very slow burner, but it builds its story with compelling elegance and conviction.

A third man in the series of character studies is the confrontational, anti-social Cemil (Tansu Biçer), who also works for the railroad, repairing tracks, apparently, and pointlessly provocative to Basri, gradually emerging as central when it seems he ought to be only peripheral. Aydin seeks to create a growing wave of tension with his story and move it toward an emotional finale. However reviewing it at Venice, where Nammi Moretti's Sacher company picked it up before screening, Hollywood Reporter writer Neil Young, perhaps tired out by too much Bela Tarr and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, called Küf "a textbook example of how international art-cinema has somehow come to equate slowness with profundity," describing 31-year-old writer-director Aydin's film as a "patience-taxer" and "static, by-the-numbers debut feature." If Aydin was thinking to compete with Ceylan's (to my mind itself "patience-taxing," but obviously impressive and universally admired) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Young suggests, he has another think coming.

Well, Neil Young was mistaken. In fact I found the cleanness and simplicity of Küf (the title means "Mold" in Turkish) more appealing than Ceylan's rambling storytelling in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Ceylan's meandering seems self-indulgent. While Aydin certainly does owe a lot for his slow-moving, minimalist style to various other contemporary filmmakers, including Ceylan and the Romanians, every minute of his film seems painfully earned and authentic. His story is about waiting, and aloneness. So we have to feel Basri's aloneness, and we have to wait. The visual images are splendid, and the violence provided by the scenes with Cemil liven things up considerably. Ali Aydin has produced a handsomely crafted, deeply-thought and -felt film. Essential to the package is the luminous cinematography of Murat Tuncel and the editing by yhan Ergursel and Ahmet Boyacioglu.

Küf (2012) 94 mins., a Turkish-German production, debuted at Venice 2012, where it received the Lion of the Future Award. Screened for this review as part of the jointly-run series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA, New york, New Directors/New Films, this year running from

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 

All times are UTC - 8 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: cknipp, Google [Bot] and 121 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group