A male-dominated commentary on malevolent masculinity and the misanthropic malaise it entails, led by our protagonist Sinan, portrayed masterfully by Aydın Doğu Demirkol, who is half Ed Droste and half a squashed Ryan Gosling.
Clocking in at a hefty 190 minutes, A Wild Pear Tree is a bit of a slog at times. Divided in to several standalone set pieces, which see Sinan get deep on love, relationships, social-economic struggles, faith and more framed throughout by his strained and often turbulent relationship with his family, most notably his gambling addict father. The film’s most crucial scene though comes through a lengthy discussion Sinan has through a chance encounter with Serkan Keskin’s Suleyman, a successful author.
It gets dead-meta, with Sinan arguing modern audiences’ predisposed need to boil a text’s message down to a one-sentence takeaway makes it nigh-on impossible for artists to effectively convey their intendment. It’s here that Ceylan’s choice to frame the film as several chapters begins to click in to place – he has so many messages to communicate to us, it’s a necessity in order to hold our attention.
Honestly, could definitely have been an hour shorter. No matter how good anything is, 3 hours is well long. It’s interesting, though, with this blog, I’m watching films from a critical standpoint again for the first time since I studied. Not sure if I’d have enjoyed, or certainly taken as much from, this film were it not for considering throughout what I’d say about it in this piece. I think that’s a good thing!
The movie as a whole is a pretty damning depiction of the male psyche. Sinan, a graduate with a strong big fish / small pond mentality, in particular. It seems the idea of book-smart men trusting in real-world romance, faux-intellectualism and truth is not purely a Western one and remains a toxic issue worldwide. His disdain for women is evident throughout, often masked by thinly veiled attempts to appear courteous. As he descends in to life as a grey-faced ghost of his rotting father Idris – a road which begins as a cloud of foreshadowing and ends up as a serious contender to Avatar’s Unobtainum as the absolute most on-the-nose thing ever – is a depressing but ultimately unavoidable one. A father, by the way, played expertly by Murat Cemcir and who plays host to at least 90% of the film’s on-screen smiles. As their personal lives and father-son relationship twist and turn throughout with no mind paid to the strong female characters in their lives, they ultimately begin to learn to accept each others flaws and forgive. All the while none the wiser to the fact the lives of their wife/mother (Bennu Yıldırımlar’s Asuman) and daughter/sister (Asena Keskinci’s Yasemin) have improved dramatically in their eventual absence.
Ceylan expertly toys with our perceptions of likability in his main characters. Sinan and Idris are each utterly unlikable people, but magnetic characters, drawing you in with each utterance, half-smile and nod. A Wild Pear Tree is beautifully shot, expertly written and directed and superbly acted. It’s just well long.
