Trying to love 'About Dry Grasses,' Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film

Sometimes the title says it all.

I last wrote that about Dino-Shark, one of the late schlockmeister Roger Corman’s last movies, but it’s equally true of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, which opens in Israel on June 27.

Ceylan is one of the world’s most acclaimed directors and most of his films are set in the austere landscapes of eastern Anatolia, as is About Dry Grasses. The mood of his movies tends to match these isolated country scenes; his movies aren’t dumb and dumber, but bleak and bleaker. When you see the words About Dry Grasses, you know you’re in for a couple of hours – actually, a little over three – with hopeless, small-minded characters displaying petty behavior.

His most successful movie, Winter Sleep, which won the Palme d’Or, the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival, was particularly portentous. But he has made some fascinating movies, notably Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a crime drama set in the Anatolian steppes, which is worth seeing wherever you can find it.

About Dry Grasses is certainly livelier than Winter Sleep, although it is also set almost exclusively in the winter. Its protagonist is Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a high-school art teacher in a village blanketed by snow. He has been teaching there for four years, since teachers are required by the government to work in isolated towns for years before they can get the choice positions in big cities. He dreams of a posting in Istanbul, a wish reminiscent of characters in Chekhov plays pining for Moscow. He thinks his life will be better in a city, but we gradually come to suspect that if he ever achieves that goal, he will be plagued by the same worries and problems that he faces in the boondocks.

This is certainly not one of those movies where a teacher finds his redemption in teaching disadvantaged students. Samet seems to feel contempt for his pupils, most of whom are the children of farmers and have little interest in academics. “None of you will become artists,” he tells his class at one point. While that is likely true, he seems to take it as an excuse not to try very hard.

Samet lives in a teacher’s residence he shares with his colleague and friend, Kenan (Musab Ekici). The two spend their time commiserating about their miserable salaries and lack of prospects. But Kenan is more realistic and relaxed about his life, and when they go out to a café with Nuray (Merve Dizdar, who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance), another teacher from the next town, Kenan is clearly infatuated with her. She’s intelligent, funny, and attractive, even though she has a limp because she was injured in a politically motivated bombing in the city. Once Kenan makes it obvious that he is interested in her, Samet feels compelled to start pursuing her, although it seems clear that the main motivation is to take her away from his friend.

Storyline generates sympathy 

If there is one storyline that may generate sympathy for Samet, it is the one about his relationship with a student named Sevim (Ece Bagcı), a beauty who, obviously, has a crush on him. While he behaves appropriately with her and seems to genuinely care for her, things get complicated, as they often do in situations like this. She writes him a love note which is intercepted, and she and a friend accuse him of inappropriate behavior. These vague accusations are enough to ensure that he won’t be able to afford a bus ticket to Istanbul, let alone get a job there.

The plot threads come together and then unravel as the story moves along slowly through its 197-minute running time. There is one especially jarring moment when Samet steps out of character and we see him go past the movie crew into another room for a moment, which doesn’t seem to be there for any reason other than to have us wonder why it’s there. This movie wouldn’t have been harmed by a little script cutting, which might have sharpened the characters and made them more vivid. But most arthouse audiences seem to love Ceylan’s snowy scenes of despair, just the way they are.