About Dry Grasses is the latest film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan and it had better – I thought to myself as the lights dimmed – have a great deal to say about dry grasses that is fascinating and insightful, given it has a formidable running time of 200 minutes. (That’s nearly three and a half hours in old money.)
It is, needless to say – with a title like that, few will mistake it for a Marvel flick – one of those films where the story unfolds obliquely and meditatively and may say everything or nothing, it’s hard to know. All I can tell you for sure is that I wasn’t ever bored even if dry grass doesn’t make an appearance until three hours and nine minutes in. A spoiler, yes, but best to be clear, so you don’t complain later.
With a title like that, few will mistake the film for a Marvel flick
As in most films by Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, Winter Sleep) we are asked to live alongside the characters as they go about their daily business. The main character is Samet (Deniz Celiloglu). He is first glimpsed as a speck, trudging wearily against a spectacular if desolate winter landscape so blanketed in heavy snow that there isn’t a blade of grass to be seen, dry or otherwise.
Samet is an art teacher in his fourth and final year of a mandatory placement in eastern Anatolia. The town is small and remote and he holds it in contempt. It is, he says, ‘a hellhole’ and ‘a dump’. He plans to seek a position in Istanbul and is keen for the year to be over. Ceylan’s creative partner and co-writer, Akin Aksu, was a teacher in just such a place and the film is based on the journal he kept while he was there.
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