The Wild Pear Tree

The Wild Pear Tree (2018) runs 188 minutes and consists almost entirely of conversation. Even within Nuri Bilge Ceylan's own body of work it is the longest and the most verbal. Sinan finishes university and returns to his town near Çanakkale. He has written a book and is looking for money to publish it. Nobody is interested. His father İdris is a teacher who has spent the family's standing on gambling debts. The film is the reckoning between the two of them. The weight sits in the long dialogue scenes. An argument with two imams, conducted while walking, runs about twenty minutes with almost no cutting. So does an encounter with a well known writer. These scenes are the test: some viewers stop there, others say the film only begins there. Murat Cemcir, who plays the father, was known as a comedian, and his performance here surprised everyone. The final ten minutes bring the only moment of closeness after all that distance, and the well is among the most discussed endings in Turkish cinema. Good for: slow cinema, long dialogue, provincial life, and father and son stories. Less good for: 188 minutes with almost no plot. Do not start it tired. Watching it in two parts is a reasonable choice.