Nuri Bilge Ceylan loves snow. The depths of winter, people in thick coats, frozen taps, the sense that these long, bitterly cold seasons in mountain regions will never end.
This is all working material for the Turkish master whose Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or in 2014. “What am I doing here?” is the regular moan from Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), the art teacher in the village school in About Dry Grasses.
Meaning: what is a man of the world doing teaching potato farmers’ children how to draw a horse? Why is he in this desolate country with two seasons that turn over so quickly that once the snow melts, the buried yellow grass almost immediately is turned brown by the fierce summer sun?
Even the grass has no chance in life: It’s unbearable. It’s like him, he muses in a rare voiceover, condemned by circumstance to insignificance. RELATED: Photos: Gallery Of Premieres & Parties Ceylan explicitly acknowledged Chekhov’s guiding spirit in Winter Sleep.
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