As an aspiring filmmaker that lacks any especially spectacular ideas for films, movies like the Turkish Uzak are inspirational. To put it simply, Uzak is just about people being people. Granted, these people are painfully lonely, but no scene in the film feels out of place from a normal day. This is the least cinematic film I've ever seen.
By no means am I suggesting that it's bad. In fact, I think Uzak will make my eventual list of the best films I've seen from this century. However, the subject matter is wonderfully banal. It was filmed exquisitely, and is one of the more beautiful films I've seen in a while. By calling it uncinematic, I simply mean that nothing in the movie seems to fit the usual mold of what people make movies about.
The movie follows to characters in Istanbul, one an established photographer in the town, the other a friend from a village coming to find work. Long scenes show the two characters watching TV, eating alone at a restaurant or simply walking around snowy Istanbul. Their solitary existence is all too easy to relate to (though the shots of the characters walking through parks and only seeing happy couples at play was a bit heavy-handed). Granted, they are fond of following attractive women around, but minus their occasional creepy habits, the characters seem like people you probably know, or even people who write rarely read movie review blogs.
Like a number of movies I've written about, I can safely say that this is not a film for everybody. Nothing really happens. Not to say there is no story, but to reiterate, the film is uncinematic and there are no twists, no major plot points, nothing common place in most films. This feels almost like the work of a director unfamiliar with movies. Rather than making a movie about movies, as most movies seem to be, Uzak is really a portrayal of the actual banality of existence.
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