ABOUT DRY GRASSES (KURU OTLAR ÜSTÜNE)

Like us, you may think that most films are far too long. About Dry Grasses is an exception: it is tense, engrossing, and full of ideas and contradictions, with subtle writing and performances that fully justify its length. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Winter Sleep, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, The Wild Pear Tree) may be the most important Turkish director of the past few decades and in About Dry Grasses he proves this once again.  Ceylan has created a talkative and often discomforting tale of a small-town art teacher, his 12-year-old female student, and an accusation of impropriety that might be false on its surface, but is rooted in truths the camera sees. A ravishingly cinematic piece of work revolving around a complex central character, a cynical, manipulative monster of a high-school art teacher whose spiritual and moral void is revealed gradually in a series of masterful brushstrokes. ~OY