BRING THEM DOWN (C-minus) - This debut film leans hard on its two rough-hewn millennial stars -- Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott -- to tell the grinding revenge thriller revolving around feuding ranching families in rural Ireland. It suffers from a confusing time-shifting narrative structure that makes its unrelenting gore even more of a chore to sit through.
Ireland's version of the Hatfields and McCoys bicker endlessly about property access and the theft of rams, and this dimly lit snit of a movie rains carnage on their lives. One plot point centers on an attack that cuts off the legs of the rams, leaving them to die, because just the legs have value, or something like that, but mainly just because this is a cruel and unrelenting howl. Abbott ("On the Count of Three," "James White") is a strong actor, but he's allowed just one speed here, and it involves perpetual brooding. He plays Michael who must care for his bitter, ailing father, Ray (Colm Meaney) and pine from afar for his old girlfriend, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), who married his rival and bore a son, Jack (Keoghan), who leads the attacks on Michael's flock.
Director and co-writer Chris Andrews outlines this tale with a soap opera plot, face-planting in the first scene, as a young Michael, in a car with Caroline and his mother, intentionally crashes the car immediately after the mother announces she's leaving the family. The mother dies and Caroline is scarred for life. And then we're supposed to sympathize with Michael, somehow. By the end, there will be a human head carried around in a bag and a dog will get stabbed and ears will get shot off.
There is just no explanation for taking such a grim tale and then jumbling the narrative, telling it from one perspective in the first half and another in the second half, neither of them particularly compelling. Andrews is trying to make a point about fathers and sons (with women and animals as mere collateral damage), but his movie is too dark, both literally and figuratively. There is just no opening here to identify with the story or empathize with the characters. It's an assault. For masochists only.
ABOUT DRY GRASSES (B-minus) - Up until now, there had never been a mediocre film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylon, even the slow-burn character studies that ticked past three hours (which his past three films have now done). But this micro-narrative about two teachers falsely accused by female students of inappropriate behavior is even more glacially paced and it takes place at a school in wintry Anatolia that seems more like a Siberian gulag -- making the first two hours feel like a chore for the viewer, too.
The third hour -- if you can get there -- redeems Ceylon's granular character study, when he turns the focus on the two teachers' passive-aggressive pursuit of a woman. Deniz Celiloglu stars as Samet, a bitter art teacher who vows to escape Anatolia after the school year, and he is roommates with social studies teacher Kenan (Musab Ekici), who has been there longer and copes better with the mind-numbing ennui and body-numbing winters. The meet Nuray (Merve Dizdar), another teacher, who lost a leg in a bombing by anti-government radicals in Ankara. Nuray is more inclined toward the handsome Kenan, but Samet -- who at first passed on dating her and introduced her to Kenan -- decides to pursue her.
Meantime, Samet has developed a strong bond with a student protege Sevim (Ece Bagci), who turns on her teacher after a perceived slight and then gets a classmate to join her in accusing Samet and Kenan of inappropriate contact. The first hour ends with the administration basically sweeping it under the rug, and you are never sure if the accusation is unfounded or whether there will be consequences for the men.
The middle third sags appreciably, though. Ceylon's dialogue (he wrote the screenplay with his wife, Ebru, and Akin Aksu, a previous collaborator on "The Wild Pear Tree") is uncharacteristically wooden; characters pontificate and give political speeches, and you can almost hear Ceylon's typewriter clacking as the actors speak the lines. At one point, Samet visits Nuray, expecting to get laid, and he is subjected to a long philosophical screed -- which actually serves as an apt metaphor for the frustrations of the viewer looking forward to Ceylon's usually suavity as a filmmaker.
One character laments "the weariness of hope," and you want to say, "Amen." Interiors here are poorly lit to go with exteriors that what character calls this "forgotten remote corner of the Earth," as if to pass along the Seasonal Affective Disorder to the viewers. I can handle a downcast story; "Climates" (2006) was no walk in the park, but it spoke volumes about fractured relationships and recriminations, and it did so in 98 perfect minutes. (Maybe Ceylon should have let his co-editor do more of the cutting here.)
If you have the patience, there are scenes and moods that are worth exploring and which might stick with you a while. Ceylon truly captures that connection between a teacher and student, which on the surface might seems inappropriately flirty but which is haunting in its depth, especially when each person feels betrayed. And Samet's late attempt at wooing Nuray (in effect betraying Kenan) is sad and sweet and smart. Nuray has the wise world-weariness of a victim of terrorism, and Dizdar turns in a nuanced portrayal of a woman (unlike a middle-school girl) who has no illusions about potential mates.
I broke this up over three nights, and the third hour was certainly worth enduring the drudgery that everyone goes through on the forgotten fringes of civilization.
BONUS TRACK
Other reviews for Ceylon's movies:
- Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2013)
- Winter Sleep (2015)
- The Wild Pear Tree (2019)
- The brilliant early trio: Distant (2002), Climates (2006) (still his best), Three Monkeys (2008).