On the eve of an election, politician Servet (Ercan Keysal), falls asleep at the wheel and kills a pedestrian. He asks his driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) who wasn’t with him at the time, to take the fall. So Eyup goes to gaol with the promise of his salary paid every month, and a lump sum when he comes out. Eyup leaves behind his wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and his dissolute son, Ismail (Rifat Sungar). When Ismail again fails his exams for university, he gets his mother to ask Servet for part of the final payment so that he can buy a car to make money on ‘the crèche run’. Eyup, Hacer and Ismail are people who seem marginalized even in their own lives.
Ceylan won Best Director at Cannes for this film and it’s easy to see why. This is essentially a four-hander and an intense, claustrophobic story is told in close up and a washed out sepia colouring that, at first, seems too leisurely for its own good. For Ceylan, who started life as a photographer, frames exquisite pictures: of the worn, little flat into which they are all crammed which is part of a building four-storeys talls and yet, seemingly, only one room thick; of wonderful shots of the Bosphorus, under whose cloud-laden skies Servet bribes the troubled Eyup to take the rap, and beside which Hacer and Ismail eat silent snacks. But most of all, Ceylan knows exactly how to film the human face. He knows exactly how close to take the camera to it, how to light that face, and how much of the face to have in the frame.
And it is in the faces that the story is told. When Hatice goes to Servet for the money, we are left in some doubt as to whether Servet will pay, and so Hatice seems to offer herself to Servet in order to get the money for her son. When Ismail returns from an aborted visit to his father in prison, he finds out that his mother is having an affair. When Eyup returns from prison, everything is told in an intense and explosive scene between husband and wife, in which everything and nothing is said. And husband and wife appear to acknowledge the necessity of both betrayal and guilt.
This is a beautiful film that won’t win Ceylan many awards from the Turkish Tourist board. However, with its exquisite, minimalist poetry, it treats both its audience and its actors as grown-up, intelligent people.