WINTER SLEEP is a representative par excellence of the cinema in Cannes : long, metaphysics, aesthetics, and a bit boring anyway.
However, several things are very interesting : already, as shown in the poster, several plans of WINTER SLEEP is beautiful to fall ass no one out of his chair. The composition of these usually place a character (often the same), in the middle of landscapes immense, but syrupy or straight line, reflecting like a photograph a feeling or an emotion.
It is necessary to see Aydin walking slowly in the middle of these cliffs of stone, confusingly similar to the plays rocky from my grandmother.
I don’t know you, but me, it evokes the nostalgia, the passing years, the regrets. All that, in A plan A minute.
But also, it should be noted that this mastery aesthetic is not present next to the 3: 16 time period of the film. It is certainly judiciously placed, so to indicate by these impressionist paintings of the state of mind of our (our) character(s), but the true heart of the film, to him, lies in the digressions metaphysical on the good, the bad, the scope of an act, the perception of the other, the richness, the poverty, the sharing of knowledge, the humiliation was voluntary or involuntary, respect, transmission, etc
Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a reproduction of a vision which seems exhaustive (3: 16 !) emotions and thoughts that live in this mountain town’s Turkish and he does it very well.
In fact, WINTER SLEEP could be a tv series in the form of several episodes, say the same : 6.
As in the mini-series of Jane Campion, TOP OF THE LAKE.
Because, with it, WINTER SLEEP sharing the taste for the intrigue, mysterious place in the beginning of the film, which evaporates to leave the place in the reflections of the existential, and the portraits of men and women complex and without concessions, and the visions are breathtaking.
Each episode would be the center of one or two digressions accurate, the author might even more develop his or her point of view on the topics he wishes to.
“A film plastically irreproachable and in the exciting background, but the pace of which does absolutely no ambition.”
In the state, the film seemed to me to be incredibly long, in the form of scenes very interesting regardless, but much too uneven when put after each other.
The construction too cyclical (discussion in a living room, a character that walks in the nature, re-discussion in a living room…) prevents any real surprise, causes drowsiness.
The predominance of the interior scenes are choking the freedom promised from the outset. Yet these moments are far from useless. They are a true reflection on the state of the world, to a view of women and men.
But it is in fact a film is booked, as often in the official selection, the elite that refuses any accessibility and prefers to lock it away with the author in a world of philosophical-aesthetic finally calibrated and codified, where the surprise does not exist anymore really.
• Achievement : Nuri Bilge Ceylan
• Screenplay : Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
• Main actors : Haluk Bilginer, Melisa Sözen, Demet Akbağ
• Country of origin : Turkey
• Released : August 13, 2014
• Duration : 3h16mn
• Distributor : Memento Films Distribution
• Synopsis : The owner of a tourist hotel seeks to give a new meaning to his life through intellectual reflection and the approximation to the other.