About Dry Grasses ★★★★

Released: 26th July 2024

Directed: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Cast: Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, Ece Bağci

Nuri Bilge Ceylan does do short films—his debut feature, The Small Town, ran at a mere 85 minutes—but since 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, each of his releases has surpassed the three hour mark. At 197 minutes, his latest, About Dry Grasses, continues this trend. In the hands of the wrong writer or director, lengthy runtimes can be an unnecessary slog, but for Ceylan, his films’ lengths are welcomed, with the epic runtimes adding immense detail and context to his extravagant and complex dialogue-heavy scenes. Worlds and scenarios unfurl with a stoic air, and through this patience, the drama is elevated to scintillating levels.

Ceylan continues his recent theme of tracking emotionally tormented men dealing with philosophical and existential musings. In About Dry Grasses, that man is Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), a teacher now living in a Eastern Anatolian village, assigned to this remote part of Turkey for, what he thinks, is an interminable amount of time. He dreams of a return to Istanbul, but this wish is essentially destroyed when he and his co-worker Kenan (Musab Ekici) are accused of inappropriate behaviour by two female pupils.

Anatolia is unforgiving and frostbitten, coated in snow and swirling mist; Kürşat Üresin and Cevahir Šahin’s cinematography captures both the splendour of the surrounding world as well as the suffocating isolation of it all. Ceylan spends solid time building the world before the accusations come to light, and we even see the events that one of the students, Sevim (Ece Bağci), brings forward against Samet. Thankfully, Ceylan doesn’t leave a question hanging about whether Samet is guilty; the existence of inappropriate behaviour that includes touching and gift giving is crystal clear.

About Dry Grasses is less about the misconduct, more the fallout for the offender. This might put some off, but Ceylan’s ability to write thorny, unlikeable male leads and ensure the audience still follows them with interest for three hours plus has perhaps never been as apparent as in About Dry Grasses. As is often the case with Ceylan’s films, the screenplay is the star of the show, a mesmerising canvas where everyday dialogue digs into the complexities of modern day life in Turkey.

Co-written with his wife and long-time writing collaborator Ebru Ceylan, as well as with Akin Aksun, About Dry Grasses boasts some of the finest, meatiest, and most riveting dialogue set pieces of recent years. One particular scene—a lengthy dinner discussion between Samet and a fellow teacher, Nuray (Merve Dizdar)—stands out for its breathtaking naturalism, intense acting, and societal commentaries. Based on this scene alone, it’s hardly a surprise Dizdar won the Best Actress award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Whilst About Dry Grasses doesn’t have the same stellar focus as Ceylan’s best film, Winter Sleep (2014), it is still a compelling, unpredictable watch. Ceylan is never afraid to point the finger at his home country, at larger issues such as patriarchy or political unrest. They are not just the backdrop to the smaller lives of his characters in About Dry Grasses; instead, they are intertwined with and directly affect their very being. It is this intelligence and complexity that makes About Dry Grasses such a spellbinding experience.