Opening Sequence of IKLIMLER
I remember this movie because of its opening sequence.
There have been great movies, and great opening shots in the history of cinema. If you were to recount the top 10 opening sequences in the history of cinema, I am sure the opening scene of Iklimler will never feature as nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished by these vain top 10 lists. Yet, this scene in Iklimler is what is so poetic about cinema as an Art form.
The English title of the movie Iklimler is Climates. It’s the fourth feature film by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He also stars in this movie with his partner Ebru Ceylan. And it is she who is the harbinger of emotions in this opening sequence. Mind you, she doesn’t speak anything and yet she is the one who does most of the talking. A good director is also the one who knows when to let the actors work their magic. No words are needed. In this one scene, even before watching, I have the whole movie laid out in front of me. How many movies you have watched that do the same? I’m not hooked to the movie after that scene; I’m invested with all my heart.
Usually in screenwriting, one of the major principles is to state the object of conflict or interest at the start of the film. The Ceylans do follow this rule but break it as well. Almost all of the movie is from the perspective of the male protagonist. We follow him as he breaks the news of separation to his wife and then follows her after she agrees. The male protagonist is whom we are supposed to root for, yet with that opening sequence, I’m more interested in how Bahar, Ebru Ceylan’s character, deals with the separation. After all, it is she whom we see in the first scene suffering. She suffers and makes us suffer with her. She portrays the inevitable.
The opening scene is this – The male protagonist Isa, a University professor, is busy in his work among the monuments taking and photographing them. His wife, Bahar, carefully observes him from a distance, immersed in his work. The camera then holds still at Bahar’s face. We wonder what’s going in her mind, what is she feeling. Why is the couple not talking, perhaps something is wrong between them. The camera is still unfazed and focused on Bahar’s face. And slowly we see a tear roll down her face. This tear doesn’t embody the pain she is feeling but it embodies of what kind of love she aspires with her partner and the impossibility of that love ever blooming in their life. The tear is not one of pity, but of helplessness and what it could have been. She doesn’t pity herself as we see her character emerge as bravest of the two in the movie. She is contemplative, and meditative in her approach, and with a hint of melancholy looks in the future of what is to come and how their separation in inevitable. That tear represents all that and the best of the best marvels of what acting can do to make us feel one with the plight and inner conflict of the character.
Tears and scenes of characters crying on screen have mostly been seen as melodramatic by a lot of populist critics. I disagree with that, we humans use this tool of tears to express ourselves more often that we use laughter as a tool to express ourselves. Laughter can seldom be fakes, but tears can rarely be. The way Iklimler shows the female protagonist in tears in a lesson in two things. Firstly, “how to say more with less to no words”. Secondly, the age old mantra of “Show, don’t tell.” Often when looking for actors for my projects, I do ask them, can you cry on cue? Not necessarily, every role may require that but it is comforting to know that the actor can cry on cue, cause if they can cry on cue, then everything else worth acting out on screen is barely that difficult. It makes my job easier to instruct them and narrow do on what I want them to do in a particular scene. In terms of writing, I often try to let the subtitles and facial movements of the actors dictate what it that they are saying to the audience is. Words are there, but the audience doesn’t remember what they listen, they remember what they see. Likewise, I remember the opening scene of Iklimler, and not the dialogues of this film which are in Turkish.
