The opening scene of Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, about the year-long breakdown of a relationship, holds the key to the director's accomplishment — and a hint to his one shortcoming. A man and a woman, Isa and Bahar (played by Ceylan and his wife, Ebru), wander quietly around a deserted Hellenic ruin, somewhere on the Turkish coast. While he photographs their surroundings and the decaying Greek columns (anything but her), she stays intently focused on him, a wistful, melancholy look in her eyes. They exchange one line of dialogue — he asks her if she's bored yet — and then go back to hovering in their separate worlds, light years apart. And there we have it. Although Ceylan will offer one or two more scenes of domestic crisis before Isa and Bahar break up, he gives us all we really need to know about this relationship right here at the very beginning. The subtle dance of mutual annoyance, the distant sense of wanting to love someone but not being able to anymore — it's all here, conveyed through the director's austere, hypnotic visuals and unusually expressive sound design. But you might very well miss it.
There has always been a world of emotional turmoil lurking beneath the placid surfaces of Ceylan's style — the deadpan appeal of his breakthrough film Distant prompted comparisons to early Jim Jarmusch — but the remarkable control he displays over his still, immaculately composed frames means that the messiness of the world intrudes only rarely. True, in Climates, it comes close to breaking out, particularly during one very brutal, unexpected scene about halfway through, but some will no doubt see Ceylan's calm, unflinching eye as a sign of a cold fish. Nothing could be farther from the truth; the cumulative impact of Climates will prove devastating to viewers attuned to the filmmaker's aesthetic. But those looking for easy emotional cues and pat narrative resolutions might want to tread warily. — Bilge Ebiri