This is the earliest of the films by Nuri Bilge Ceylan we watched so far and unfortunately it’s also the roughest one. This one is set in Istanbul so it’s great to watch scenes of the city, especially in the winter. However while we can just about discern what this film is about, it’s a struggle to make out what he is trying to say and the lack of refinement makes it feel subpar in comparison with his later works.

Mahmut is an established photographer who lives alone in Istanbul while Yusuf is a relative of his. One day Yusuf arrives from their home village, saying that their local factory has closed down and everyone is out of work. Mahmut lets Yusuf stay in his apartment while the latter looks for a job. At first Yusuf is confident of getting work as a sailor quickly but he has no luck and as the days pass, tension between the two men increase as Mahmut resents his unwanted presence in his house. It probably doesn’t help either that the two men are very different. Mahmut is more urbane and sophisticated while Yusuf is direct and uneducated. Yet Mahmut only exacerbates the distance between them through his actions and by pretending to be more intellectual than he really is, repeatedly declining opportunities for the two to bond with each other.

This is not a long film but even about halfway through it’s hard to see what the point is of showing these two men being mostly listless and aimless as they each go about their routines without much enthusiasm. A key clue here is the title of the film itself, Uzak, which apparently means Distant in Turkish. So I interpret the director’s intent is to point out that the two men could easily help one another and perhaps feel some human warmth as both are profoundly lost and lonely in their own way. However it feels like a bit of a stretch and more than a little odd being that both are men. Both have girl problems. Mahmut is divorced but evidently still has unresolved feelings for his ex-wife but is unable to articulate them. Yusuf seems so starved of female company that he takes to stalking beautiful women he sees on the street. Yet it’s hard to see how the two can help each other with that as commiserating together as bros feels a little shallow.

The film explores more interesting territory in how Mahmut is a photographer who was once artistic and creative but is now so jaded, perhaps by life in the city, that he has given all that up. When the two go to the countryside together to take photographs, Mahmut stops the car for a moment to note how beautiful the landscape is and how it would make for a great photo. Yet when Yusuf offers to help him set up his equipment, Mahmut ponders for a long while only to say that it’s not worth the effort. At the same time, he watches porn but hides it from Yusuf. There is potential in these moments of insight but it’s too little and too disconnected from their other interactions to feel satisfying.

While Uzak isn’t bad all around, it’s still not good enough. You can recognize some of the DNA of Ceylan’s later work in it but by itself, it feels like the director is at that point in time still finding his feet and deciding what works. I suppose we can watch this and be reassured that even great directors had to learn their craft and start somewhere but you can easily skip this and not be missing much.