Midway through his life, Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) looks around and sees nothing he likes. Originally from Istanbul, he obliges his mandatory teaching service in this remote village of perpetual winter with detachment and resentment. Samet’s only friend is a 13-year-old student, Sevim (Ece Bağcı), who laughs too loudly at his jokes and spends too much time hanging out in his office — which doubles as a storage closet for the athletics department. You can see trouble coming a mile away.
Then, one day, the Turkish morality police raid the classrooms and search the students’ bags for contraband. They find lipstick, pocket knives and, in Sevim’s notebook, a love letter. The love letter passes from the enforcers to a teacher, then to Samet after he bullies her into giving it to him. When Sevim confronts Samet and asks for the letter back, he lies and tells her he tore it up and threw it away. She knows better. He knows his position comes with status. Only one of them is mistaken.
Samet is not someone you’d want to cross or befriend. He’s frustrated, angry and bitter. Does he confiscate the love letter because he’s afraid it’s about him? Or does he refuse to return it because it’s not about him? The fact that director Nuri Bilge Ceylan — working with co-writers Akin Aksu and Ebru Ceylan — never says only condemns Samet.
About Dry Grasses is Ceylan’s ninth feature in a career that grows richer with every entry. This is not a bombastic movie, but it is quietly riveting, absurdly comical and full of moral conflicts and conversations. Sevim accuses Samet and Kenan (Musab Ekici), Samet’s roommate and fellow teacher, of improprieties, though the accusations are never stated out loud. They cannot be: That’s the decree from those in charge at the school — men, exclusively — and they take Sevim’s accusations seriously even if they don’t believe her. “That’s how their minds work,” they say over and over again. It’s a textbook study of how institutions dismiss the problem without addressing it.
All the while, Samet and Kenan are both attempting to court Nuray (Merve Dizdar), another teacher and a young activist who lost a leg in a terrorist bombing a few years back. The loss halted relationships with others and forced her to understand what her life is now. The men don’t care. They may not even be that interested in her, but they are interested in besting each other. So Nuray gives a speech about what she’s looking for, not from them but from her, and Ceylan condemns his protagonist further.
Or does he? About Dry Grasses is a slippery film that reveals enough to make judgments but withholds enough never to feel confident in them. He perhaps tips his hand too much with Sevim, giving her enough ammunition for the accusation, but also plays coy with the love letter to make you wonder why Samet is so bent out of shape in the first place. The cinematography, from the team of Cevahir Şahin and Kürşat Üresin, employs long shadows and dark interiors to underline how difficult it is to see all sides of the story. It also gives Ceylan’s three-hour narrative the pictorial quality of a Rembrandt painting, a reminder that even in the farthest corners of the globe and in the pettiest of conflicts, one can still find the profound.
ON SCREEN: About Dry Grasses opens in limited release on March 29.