Ipek Gurkan*
The late works, in Theodor W. Adorno’s terms, do not resemble the “taste of ripe fruit.” They incline towards wrinkliness and tastelessness, documented in history as subjective interpretations trapped within themselves due to “creating gaps in form for the sake of expression.” Setting aside the tastelessness, devastation, or artistic discordance for a moment, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest work carries traces of a maturity period and signs of aging. The mentioned aging manifests in the film through a thoughtful and actional slowness, the tone of a life that is emotionally and potentially dying slowly, declared with an adagio and all other formal arrangements.
In On Dry Grass (2023), Ceylan attempts something he has never done before. With a tendency that we could explicitly call the style of the maturity period, he incorporates a scene that reveals his production process within the film itself. By creating this scene through the mise-en-scène, Ceylan commodifies his production, creating distance with the audience while removing the distance with himself. This distance-less space does not open a real window or door to us. Or at least, they do not open themselves to us in the known sense. The story continues from where it left off after this inserted scene. The alienated audience waits with curiosity and astonishment to return to the story, but the connection that minds prone to dreaming await does not occur. This scene, which could easily be integrated into a dream or déjà vu, resists the diegetic narrative and sharply diverges from it. A scene is created that does not reconcile with the narrative, not serving it by integrating itself into it. This scene pierces through the narrative universe, like Ceylan’s late but confident gestural move. It is not an attempt stuck among conventions, but rather an authoritative orientation that avoids subjectivity as much as it creates form, inevitably including “the signs of its own history.”
We could say this orientation of Ceylan’s is “a strong gesture.” The scene itself creates an indeterminate space, and with this space, it remains. This powerful gesture creates an intermediate or violated space, akin to a threshold. It is unclear whether it opens towards a beginning or an end. A scene that belongs nowhere, inviting all possibilities, also displays pure instrumentality, as in gesture theory. This interrupted, introspective move invites us to a realm of potentials while simultaneously canceling itself, the power of this violation requiring almost a meta perspective to understand.
Violations, Conventions, and Aging
Ceylan does not entirely demolish the cinematic canon he has created, but with a slight attempt towards youth, he indicates that the sharp, irascible gesture’s intensity will increase. He creates a gap within the safe environment of tradition. Adorno, in the matter of late style, spoke of the work not being reducible to subjective interpretations through psychology or biographical data. However, this does not mean that a “subjective maturity” trail will not be sought, at least in a Saidian perspective. We can see the late style or the form-oriented orientation as “in the body of the work as a sensory being, perceivable and tangible in ‘form.'” The scene in question might appear suitable for various speculative thoughts for minds meticulously prepared with external or (outward) references, or though it carries the signs of late-period works, it serves a kind of “apple” function. With an arrangement of empty and unfilled images, it surprises but primarily involves the viewer in perception. With the conceptual break created in the mise-en-scène, an interval placed between two similar scenes, we witness a change that transforms the viewer into an observer. Therefore, as Şükrü Argın said about the “apple” image in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), as the distance increases in this scene, the viewer becomes a part of the observed with an internal and involved perspective. It becomes a scene that we experience in the form of the perceivable and tangible. Then, we can say this scene is the gesture of a mature cinema.
The director mixes his authority with the authority of the character, objectifying the subjective reflections with the material elements of the film. This move, sharply directed towards the extra-cinematic space, does not concern a poetic and aesthetic gesture. It allows us to ask a Saidian question: Is it the artist’s mature subjectivity? Showing contrasts: We see the tension between creating reality and showing it as it is. But here, “the contradiction between showing the truth and giving pleasure” does not disappear. This tension is particularly characteristic of late-period works as “subjectivity and objectivity” coexist. In Adorno’s terms, the “bitter” tastes of late-period works resist “those who approach only for tasting.” In Edward Said’s view, allowing a contrapuntal reading, the binary dialectical tension coexists without a resolution concern. But the contrapuntal contradiction here derives its power directly from a political, political narrative, constantly reviving interest in a dynamic free from it. On the contrary, we sometimes surrender to the clichés of political jargon in the film, yet there is a “movement” where the subjective and objective elements mingle, where the real and the fictional reality intertwine. According to Adorno, this process is what keeps late-period works alive or dynamic. Ceylan’s form-oriented style, without wholly violating the cinematic tradition, directs the safe routes of tradition to itself this time. As John Berger wrote about Rembrandt’s late self-portrait, the questioning of existence that remains when everything worldly or desire-based fades away “reveals the subjectivity of the late work.” On the other hand, the unchanged objective attitude carries “a counter-tradition, even if with interruptions,” within the tradition. This is almost exactly an Adornian, Saidian perspective.
The exile, the person who needs to be articulated to a narrative due to rootlessness. With the side inclined to create his story, he feeds on the chasm between accepting reality or his entire existence. This mood or exile state follows him like a scar. In every narrative he creates, these traces are with him. If we speak of scars as “peepholes” for this conceptual scene, it resembles the traces of “leaving the artwork” state. So much so that the character escaping from the created narrative universe’s mise-en-scène and finding himself again – but this time outside the fiction – in a “real” mise-en-scène, essentially shows the futility of the character’s (or the director’s?) attempt to reach his own self. Because this conceptual and film-included scene does not articulate to any scene that follows. Such an interpretation is suitable for a symbolic view.
The film, besides the mentioned scenes, also questions through another scene the relationship between cinema and the mediums it has been compared with since the beginning, such as the novel and photography, with a meta perspective. This questioning is a formal, material criticism. In the film – as briefly touched upon earlier – the relationship between mediums such as cinema/novel, moving image/photography is emphasized on difference and distinction. Another scene that deliberately violates the narrative is the one where Samet and his friend Kenan take their own photos. After the photos of these two characters, a series of photos of non-narrative, non-fictional characters taken by Ceylan turns this scene into a photo exhibition. Still images are displayed in sequence. Again, we find Ceylan’s (mature) autobiographical subjective traces here. Actually, a subjectivity close to what Adorno saw in Beethoven. A form-producing, conceptual subjectivity. On the other hand, different from the media convergence in the film’s finale, Ceylan, while moving between mediums, does not attempt to bring one closer to the other. With this and the other conceptual scene revealing the production process, Ceylan involves the audience in a higher fiction by commodifying his diegetic universe with a material questioning. Ceylan’s signs of aging or the “artistic discordance” mentioned at the beginning are easily seen with his occasional (conscious) violation of the traditional structure and (or) his traversal across mediums while remaining faithful to the conventional structure of the film. The violations coincide with a self-closing tradition.
Ceylan’s early period (first) film, Koza’s photographic storytelling, turns into a material critique and a violating element in the maturity period starting film, On Dry Grass. The first of two different instrumental attitudes emphasizes the essence of images and allows for editing, creating a more pure and cinema-specific space; the second uses photographic stillness as a critical interruption/disruption unarticulated to the narrative.
Although maturity period works have certain common characteristics, each creates its own objectivity and subjectivity, thus distinctly setting itself apart from previous works. Therefore, this sharp or irascible, introspective gesture, despite all its familiarity, is a “new” but “mature” cinematic gesture for Ceylan’s own cinema. Now a gesture that allows a meta perspective, carrying the trace of personal history. Or a reflective thought. It sets it apart from his other films as a late-period work.
Recurring motifs, themes, similar characters, self-referential… Does this correspond to what Marcel Proust said about the “exhaustion of inspiration” [24]? Does inspiration wane in the late period? Is that why we repeat? It is not a last period or maturity period malaise but what we observe. The film greets us with a gesture that can be called a sign of aging. A small but sharp gesture: covering similar narrative styles made so far in its own narrative universe, but relatively and occasionally obeying conventions, a subjective gesture. Not a disconcerting or tasteless late style. More so, a confident state of maturity. Ceylan’s last film, and the increased subjectivity in his subsequent works, seems to be defining the limit of his cinema’s formal tendency. The dignified weight of the late period ends with a temporality of knowing oneself, looking down on life from above. It’s unclear whether this top-down (meta) view is timely for the director or the main character.
Aging is a winter spirit… The introspective references in Ceylan’s first film, Koza, as time or in the late period, pierce through the narrative universe like an irascible gesture. Is this the crankiness of old age? Not really. Rather, it’s the wisdom of someone who understands well how to think in images and knows the film form. A competence based on storytelling, directing, structuring a film. We witness Ceylan’s formal maturity, as Şükrü Argın said, like a butterfly that owes its beauty to the cocoon it emerged from.
[1] Theodor W. Adorno, “Beethoven’s Late Style”, in Music Writings, 2nd Edition, trans. Şeyda Öztürk, Istanbul: YKY, 2019, p. 136.
[2] Ibid., p. 136.
[3] Cem İleri, I Prefer N-N-Not To, Istanbul: Norgunk, 2022, p. 16.
[4] From Agamben, İpek Gürkan, “Cinematic Gestures or Gestures of a Silent Resistance”, Sinecine: Journal of Film Studies, 14(2): 273-306.
[5] Cem İleri, I Prefer N-N-Not To, p. 16.
[6] In the translation of Edward Said’s On Late Style, the word “irascible” is rendered as “huysuz” (irritable). In Adorno’s Music Writings, it is described as “öfkeli” (angry). Both terms are used interchangeably throughout this text.
[7] Ibid., p. 136.
[8] Orhan Koçak, “Between Adorno and Said on Beethoven”, birartıbir, December 24, 2018, https://birartibir.org/adorno-ile-said-arasinda-beethoven/
[9] Ulus Baker, Brain Screen, ed. Ege Berensel, Istanbul: Birikim, 2012, p. 227.
[10] Şükrü Argın, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: Asymmetric Complaint Society”, Birikim, issue 272, 2011, p. 22.
[11] Edward Said, On Late Style, trans. Özge Çelik, Istanbul: Metis, 2008, p. 158.
[12] Theodor W. Adorno, “Beethoven’s Late Style”, p. 136.
[13] Edward Said, The Spirit of Winter, trans. Tuncay Birkan, Istanbul: Metis, 2000, p. 42.
[14] Ibid., p. 140.
[15] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, trans. Yurdanur Salman, Istanbul, Metis, 1986, p. 112.
[16] Edward Said, The Spirit of Winter, pp. 36-37.
[17] Ibid., pp. 36-37.
[18] Ibid., p. 37.
[19] Ibid., p. 37.
[20] Ibid., p. 40.
[21] In the 1966 film by Belgian director André Delvaux, The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short, said during a car journey to perform an autopsy outdoors. For the scene where the dialogue occurs, see 50’19”. This scene of the car journey to the autopsy in Delvaux’s film resembles the scene where they search for a body in Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
[22] Theodor W. Adorno, describes the gesture of leaving the artwork as an “angry gesture” here. See “Beethoven’s Late Style”, p. 136.
[23] Theodor W. Adorno, “Beethoven’s Late Style”, p. 137.
[24] Marcel Proust, Writings on Literature and Art, trans. Roza Hakmen, Istanbul: YKY, 2020, p. 25.
[25] See Edward Said, The Spirit of Winter, p. 42. Originally, as Said quotes Wallace Stevens, “Exile is a winter spirit; here, the possibility of spring is as close yet unreachable as the pathos of summer and autumn,” and correspondingly in the text it is altered to “late style is a winter spirit.”
[26] Şükrü Argın, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: Asymmetric Complaint Society”, p. 23.
*Ipek Gurkan is a Turkish scholar and a writer.
*This article was originally published in Birikim Magazine and translated into English by Politurco.
