“I like to have the freedom a novelist has”: Nuri Bilge Ceylan on Winter Sleep

As widely noted at the time, it was no great surprise when Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep won this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or. After all, since first appearing in the main Competition with Distant (Uzak, 2002), which carried off both the Grand Prix and the Best Actor prizes, he’d won most of the festival’s major awards. Besides, many felt Once Upon a Time in Anatolia would have nabbed the big one in 2011, had Terrence Malick not made his long-awaited return to filmmaking with the emphatically ambitious The Tree of Life. So hopes for Winter Sleep were high. Not for the first time, the predictions were right: the most prestigious of all festival prizes confirmed, if confirmation were still needed, that the remarkably consistent achievements of the Turkish writer-director had earned him a place among the most distinguished artists working in film today. 

But what of the film itself? As ever with Ceylan, it shows him remaining absolutely true to his abiding concerns while at the same time challenging himself – and his audience. Centred on Aydin (Haluk Bilginer, familiar in the 80s to British television audiences as Mehmet in EastEnders), a retired middle-aged actor living with his younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sözen) and divorcee sister Necla (Demet Akbag) at his remote boutique hotel in Cappadocia, the film is another of Ceylan’s piercingly astute, often affectionately witty studies in pride, vanity, insecurity and self-deception – especially (but not exclusively) of the masculine variety. The setting may seem a cosy haven from the hubbub of the modern world, but the warm, firelit interiors can have a suffocatingly claustrophobic effect, especially when tensions steadily mount, both within the household and in Aydin’s dealings with some of his tenants, after a boy hurls a stone at his car windscreen. It’s not only the glass that is damaged…

Ceylan’s customary analytical (but never judgemental) interest in individual psychology and moral nuance, underpinned by his firm grasp of social delineation and interaction, ensures that the film’s focus on Aydin and a few others resonates rather more widely; it’s not only about very particular familial problems but a reflection on privilege and poverty, commitment and scepticism, success and failure, response and responsibility. In these regards, as in its open nod to Chekhov (whose name again appears in the closing credits), it’s wholly in keeping with Ceylan’s earlier work. Where it differs is in its more abundant talk and its (intentionally) oppressive interiority and audacious pacing; as in Anatolia, some scenes last long enough to begin to test our patience, just as the conversations they chronicle test that of the characters. When at one point we’re suddenly out in the sunlight following a stallion speeding over a steppe, the sense of liberation is truly exhilarating.

Writing, as he has since Climates (2006), with his wife Ebru, Ceylan has again drawn on the kind of people, places and situations he knows from personal experience to fashion a film of far wider import: though marooned in deepest Cappadocia, his characters might be living more or less anywhere. Notwithstanding its rich echoes of Chekhov, Bergman, Shakespeare and others, it becomes clear from the first few scenes that nobody else could have made this particular chamberwork, such is the meticulous attention to every small but significant detail, to a visual beauty that’s never merely picturesque, and to an account of human foibles that’s at once painfully honest and admirably compassionate.

Our interview took place in Cannes several days before Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or. Though Ceylan seemed relaxed and fairly pleased with the film, he evidently had no expectations regarding its potential as a prize-winner.

Geoff Andrew: How did the film come about?

Nuri Bilge Ceylan: It’s inspired by several short stories by Chekhov. In fact, I’d been thinking about one of the stories for 15, maybe 16 years, but until now I felt it was very difficult to turn into a film. Nothing very much actually happens in the story, and while Chekhov is able to describe emotions in such a way that you understand them, when you’re so dependent on dialogue it can be less clear. But finally, I felt sufficiently confident to make a film out of it; then, of course, I altered everything – changed characters, introduced new stories, things like that. First Ebru and I wrote the overall story, then for each scene we began to write the dialogue. She’d write her version, I’d write mine, then we’d compare them. And the battle begins!

Our morning discussions are to test out what we’ve written. It’s by arguing about a scene that we make it deeper; also, we’re able to see it from both the man’s and the woman’s point of view. So for each scene, we did this many times, rewriting the dialogue over and over, and in the end we had a script twice as long as the one for Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Then I shot around 200 hours of footage. So I’d no idea how long the film would turn out. My first cut was four and a half hours, then I got it down to three and a quarter hours.

Was Aydin your starting point and main focus?

Yes. The Turkish word ‘aydin’ means intellectual, so that’s why we gave him that name. I know this character very well – from my own personality, and from my friends. I feel he’s one of us. All human beings have very complex natures, and that’s what I wanted to look at.

Someone asked me if the film says anything about contemporary Turkey. How would you answer that?

Well, Aydin is a very typical modern Turkish intellectual, and there’s a big gap between him and the poor people in the village. But this kind of gap between the educated well-off and the poor exists in most countries; it’s not just Turkey. Then there’s the fact that he’s apparently not religious but writes about religious matters. In Turkey, if you’re Muslim, you’re not really free to write about religion. Sometimes people have an urge to speak out about religion – partly, perhaps, to show that they’re not afraid to do so. Aydin is perhaps fairly typical in that he wants to be seen as a bit of a hero because he writes about religion, but at the same time there’s a part of him that’s quite cautious or timid. He wants to fight the fear he feels, but it still shows.

Haluk Bilginer, who plays Aydin, used to be in a British soap called EastEnders. Is that why you have Aydin say he never took roles in any soaps?

No, I didn’t know he’d been in that series. I wrote that line because it implies he wasn’t really successful as an actor. He says he doesn’t like soaps; what he’s not saying is that he hasn’t been getting any offers of work – even for soaps. That’s why he’s at the hotel, and why he speaks so idealistically about theatre acting. 

You used to like casting your family and friends for your actors; here, as in your last film, you used seasoned professionals. 

Well, we wanted the dialogue to be spoken exactly as written, with no changes. When such long conversations are involved, only professionals can do that. So we went for the best…

Some scenes must have been very demanding in terms of getting the subtle mood shifts right. Did you rehearse much?

Not before the shoot, if that’s what you mean. We just had the main actors read through the script two or three times. I don’t like to do too much beforehand. At that point it feels artificial. Besides, I find myself beginning to hate the script. I just needed them to come prepared to memorise the dialogue for those long scenes.

Did you always think the film would have rather more dialogue than your previous work?

Yes, I wanted to try that. But it’s not just a question of the amount of dialogue; it’s the kind of dialogue, which in this case is more literary, sometimes even quite philosophical. That was a big risk; most of the time such dialogue doesn’t really work in cinema, where we’re more used to hearing the language of the streets. But I wanted to do something different this time.

When I started making films, the dialogue in most Turkish movies was poor and not at all believable. For many of us it felt important to bring in more naturalistic dialogue – the language of the streets. So now there’s generally no problem with the dialogue in Turkish films. That being the case, this time around I wanted to have the freedom to use another kind of language, such as you might find, for instance, in a novel. Now that may not be the language of the streets, but you do find it in real life, especially when educated people who consider themselves intellectuals get together. I was always very concerned about whether I could make such language work. It’s why Ebru and I discussed the dialogue so much. Sometimes she’d feel a scene needed more street language and I’d reject that argument; where I did, I take full responsibility for the results. Of course, I don’t know if it works or not.

I think it does; it shows how we modify the way we speak according to the situation we’re in. But it’s not only more literary. More than their predecessors, the characters in this film tend to say what they mean. Also, they use language for reasons of power: Aydin, for example, always likes to have the last word.

But as in the earlier films, they all still deceive each other, and themselves. Moreover, because they know each other well, they all understand that this is what’s happening. For instance, the sister wants to go back to her husband, but knows the others will think she’s weak if she does that, so she makes out it’s her husband who wants her back – but obviously the others can see what she’s doing. Meanwhile, Aydin tells his sister many things that aren’t true – and she doesn’t let him get away with that. This kind of thing happens all the time in life. Like everyone, I deceive myself a lot, because I try to protect myself; Of course, in real life we find that both necessary and useful. But in cinema it’s important to face up to the truth and show what’s really going on. That, for me, is one of the aims of art.

Did you worry about the film being so long?

Of course. No one in the industry likes long films. The distributors, the cinema-owners, television – they all hate them. Most of the audience don’t like long films. But I like the challenge. I like to have the freedom a novelist has. And here, the story insisted on being long, so what could I do? Besides, after the first few months of its theatrical release, a film has a different life on DVD or online, so you can watch it in fragments if you prefer. We rarely read novels in one sitting; why shouldn’t we be able to watch films that way too? So in the longer term, the duration of a film is not so problematic.

How important was it to shoot in that very striking location in Cappadocia?

Actually, I didn’t want to shoot there; it felt too beautiful, too interesting. So I looked at many places for the hotel setting, but in the end I couldn’t find another that was right. I not only needed a place that was very isolated; there also had to be a good reason for tourists to come to such a remote place. In the end this one was our best option; it was some way from town and had a landscape tourists would want to visit. The tourists were important because I wanted there to be people Aydin might bump into after a fight with his sister, people to whom he’d have to be polite at all times. To me that’s almost a kind of alienation, part of life’s dark side. I find it very hard to be social if I feel troubled or sad.

So that’s why we went with this location. But in the end I liked it a lot; also, I don’t show the landscape very much anyway. 

Much of it is a very interior film. The hotel seems cosy at first, but then you make it feel claustrophobic. When tensions arise, we want to get outside, and when we do we feel a kind of freedom… 

Yes. And then there’s the snow. That helped a lot. I wanted there to be snow, especially when Aydin leaves the house. When he decides he must change his life, it’s important that the world feels a very different place. All that white. It makes him wonder whether he really wants to go back to Istanbul, what the appeal of that world is. At my age I know how he feels. I don’t mean that with regard to Istanbul, but more generally: there comes a time when you feel you are being pushed away from life, by your age.

Indeed! Let’s change the subject. Your use of colour and lighting seems more naturalistic than in your last two films.

Well, I wanted it to be naturalistic in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia too, but sometimes the technology wouldn’t allow that; in some scenes the colour grading was quite strange. Three Monkeys, of course, wasn’t naturalistic – but I don’t like that look any more in terms of colour. 

As for Winter Sleep, it’s not just the colour but the style overall. I wanted it to be more neutral, less visible; not to draw attention to itself. So I tried to make it more typical. Shot-reverse shot for conversations. Some long takes, because I really wanted some of the conversations to feel long – though in life, obviously, they often last much longer, going round in circles until morning. That’s the kind of mood I wanted to create.

What’s especially convincing is the way you build the discussions up, so that what begins as seemingly innocuous gradually can become very pointed and quite nasty.

If you know someone well, that means you also know their weaknesses, their vulnerable points. That’s sometimes the tragedy of marriage. Normally you never use that knowledge, but sometimes, if you feel it’s necessary, you’ll use it.

You’ve said before that you make a film partly for yourself, as a way of dealing with things you’ve been thinking about.

Well, I don’t really make it for myself, but I do draw on myself, and in looking at myself, I also try to understand the nature of human relationships. I feel there’s a darkness in life, and if I can face that realistically, then I feel better in myself, in that life becomes more understandable. More tolerable, perhaps. But you know me: I’m a pessimistic person…