Climates Details

* * * This review contains spoilers * * *ShowHide

[Highly rated reviewer]

Climates

Isa (Nuri Ceylan) and his younger girlfriend Bahar (Ceylan's real life wife Erbu) are on holiday when Isa suggests they go seperate ways for a while. Bahar agrees and Isa returns to Istanbul alone. We follow him in his single life.

I won't say more than that lest I spoil what, in Climates, passes for a plot. Frankly though if you want to discover the rest after this review then I will have failed. I thought Babel was dull. I thought Pavee Lackeen was the most tedious experience a cinema could offer me. I shan't take back what I said about those films (I was right) but both look like the most engaging experiences in the world next to Climates.

Nuri Blige Ceylan's film is, put simply, the most mind-pulverisingly tedious experience you are likely to have all year. Time will appear to fold back in on itself as you watch, creating for your pleasure a seemingly endless hellspace of event free, dialogue free shots of nothing important happening for what seems like an eternity. It will be responsible for several religious conversions as audiences pray to God, Buddha, Allah, whoever to PLEASE make it end.

I'll give Ceylan this. Both he and his wife can act. Erbu Ceylan even threatens to be affecting at times and in a movie where I gave even half a crap what happened to her I imagine she'd be teriffic.

The tedium, however, staggeringly, is not the film's biggest problem. Isa is clearly our hero so what happens midway through the movie? He rapes an old girlfriend. He's still our hero thereafter... the woman even calls him later in the film. I didn't like the guy before but I can't root for a rapist. I want to see him get hurt, not go through his loneliness with him. This putrid development turned my mood from not really caring about this piece of excrement to actively hating it's guts.

So, a boring piece of filth that asks us to sympathise with and root for a rapist. To Hell with this movie.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Well............

No go if you are looking for a story and some action. Holds the attention because of the wonderful camera work and the very natural acting. Lacks humour. The special feature facility was more entertaining as the stars came to life whilst doing the actual filming!