The lethargic pace and long, stationary camera angles might frustrate some, but Nuri Bilge Ceylan has something interesting to say in his 2006 Turkish marital discord drama Climates. A filmmaker known (and loved) for conveying more through images than words — but doesn't shy away from lengthy dialogues when the situation demands them — is arguably at his most restrained in this film, starring himself and wife-screenwriter, Ebru Ceylan, as a couple navigating a turbulent relationship. Nuri is Isa, an art history professor. Ebru is Bahar, a television art director.
The opening sequence makes evident the signs of strain in their relationship: the couple is in the middle of a vacation; she is pictured with a detached expression, lost in thought. It’s her face that first tells us something is wrong, recalling Monica Vitti in the opening scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film L’eclisse. Bahar’s countenance wears the same sense of discontent.
It's not just the characters written by Nuri, including the one he plays, that resemble those of Antonioni; his use of vast open spaces and composition evokes the work of the Italian master who specialised in the cinema of loneliness. Nuri is in no way aping that style; he has his own. A while later, we learn Isa is not happy with this relationship either. When Bahar goes for a swim at the beach, he starts an imaginary conversation in which he expresses his wish to break up with her. He later gets his wish; months later, we see him pursuing Serap, a woman currently in a relationship with one of his former colleagues. She was mentioned in an earlier conversation with Bahar.
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The fact that Serap is in a relationship doesn’t stop her from sharing the bed with Isa. They indulge in rough sex, staged with a static camera in such a way that it almost borders on comedy. For someone who has seen only the quiet, graceful filmmaker side of Nuri — his work, his interviews, offscreen persona — seeing him act in front of the camera in this manner, without any inhibitions – he looks like the Turkish version of Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) – might take a while to get used to. But there's no doubt about this: the man can act. He plays Isa as a complicated and confused character, always unsure of what he wants to do and how to react to the turmoil, conveying, just like Ebru earlier, his thoughts through his visage. He spends a lot of time contemplating, and at one point, ponders the possibility of getting Bahar back.
The shifting moods and feelings play out on their faces like shifting seasons, and I imagine that’s where the film’s title comes from. The film is replete with quiet scenes which might, to a less patient viewer, seem empty and pointless, but if you are willing to make it through its short, 97-minute runtime. This duration is an anomaly in the work of a filmmaker known for his much longer, more rewarding, more celebrated films. You might find the film having a sort of probing effect on you, mining your subconscious for your innermost feelings and moral stance. It's the kind of film worth watching at least once.
