Cannes Film Festival 2023: “Dry Herbs”, Nuri Bilge Ceylan always at the attention of the human condition

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urkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, returns with a film with a singular trio in a college in Eastern Anatolia, reflecting the character of a manipulative teacher inspires unease.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, born in 1959, where he is used to Cannes, in 2014 where he won the Palme d’Or with Winter Sleep, the director returns for the sixth time in competition, and this year returns with « Les Herbes secs « .

Dry Herbs, is the ninth feature film, which follows the daily life of a somewhat unsympathetic teacher – manipulator, as often in the director’s films, whom he confuses with his talkative side and his pretentious speech on utopia, the political commitment, the good, the bad, and so on.

Three professors at a rural college, two men and a young woman, are chomping at the bit in the cold. The hero is just waiting for his hypothetical transfer to Istanbul, and the other just missed out on a promotion – he was hoping to become the principal of the establishment. The third appears later. Both fiery and broken, she returns from hell, and gradually converts to resignation, reinstalled with her parents.

Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) teaches drawing in a small school and despairs of obtaining his transfer to Istanbul. He lives with his colleague Kenan (Musab Ekici), an eternal bachelor who would like to find love. Distractions are rare in this deserted region with rigorous customs which knows only two seasons, with a sudden transition from winter to summer.

He pushes his students to rebel, to love, to be themselves. « Let’s keep sheep, as long as it’s outdoors! », says the teacher who sees himself as a shepherd of souls. Samet and Kenan, his colleague and roommate, find themselves accused of harassment by the best student, the one to whom Samet pays a lot of attention. We discover that Samet has a dark, manipulative side.

The filmmaker takes us on an equivocal love trio. Samet and Kenan, in search of love, meet Nuray, a left-wing activist who lost her right leg in a suicide attack. The best in others triggers the worst in Samet. The budding romance between Nuray and Kenan brings out the monster in him. He wants to smear, make ugly the beautiful in others.

A dinner between Samet and Nuray is an endless exchange of good and bad, commitment and indifference. The dialogue lasts a very long time. Face-to-face between the two worlds leaves little room for neutrality, necessarily complicit in each other. And suddenly, all of a sudden, we find Nuri Bilge Ceylan filming nature like no one else.

The dry herbs, a film about commitment, indifference and utopia. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, remains an inspired director.
Form

Title: Dried herbs
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Duration: 3h17
Cast: Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici
Synopsis: Samet is a young teacher in a remote village in Anatolia. While he has been waiting for several years for his transfer to Istanbul, a series of events makes him lose all hope. Until the day he meets Nuray, a young teacher like him.

Copyright ©2023 IMPACT EUROPEAN

Copyright ©2023 IMPACT EUROPEAN

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Gabriel MIHAI

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