(…)
Despite the prominence of the theme of journeying /migration in the narrative, Distant is a film not so much about mobility and displacement as the sense of getting stuck in an engulfing place where one is supposed to belong. "Provinciality," in this sense, appears to be a powerful thematic trope in Distant, like Ceylan’s earlier films, signifying constraining belonging and spatial confinement. It is doubly articulated in the narrative: On the one hand, the small town that Yusuf has come from represents provincial life in comparison to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated culture of Istanbul. On the other hand, however, the "small town" itself becomes a metaphor for provinciality of Turkey as a whole in relation to the ("Western") world. Mahmut’s former wife feels entrapped in Istanbul in a way similar to the way that Yusuf feels about his native town. In an interview, Ceylan explains how he feels about the perceived "provinciality" of Turkey as follows: "Turkey is from the small town of the world. I started going to Europe when I was seventeen; the disparity of those places is startling. They also make you feel somehow the extent to which they view Turkey as the small town" ("From Kasaba to Uzak: Interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan" 2004).
At first sight, the story of Distant is about the slowly deteriorating relationship between a guest and a host as they both discover day by day the small elements dividing them. A deeper look, however, would prove that the morbid tone of the relationship between Yusuf and Mahmut arises not so much from the elements dividing them, but from what they share. What Mahmut sees in Yusuf is not simply a stranger invading his private space with lumpen manners, but someone who reminds him of something all too familiar and intimate. Yusuf’s provincial identity makes Mahmut face with his own background, the suppressed side of his own identity. What he cannot stand is not Yusuf’s alien presence, but the affinity between the two. Consequently, Mahmut grows increasingly intolerant and cruel towards his younger cousin. As the tone of the relationship between the two gets more degenerated, they make each other feel less and less at home in the space that they share. Every small detail from the odor of Yusuf’s worn out shoes to the crumbs of tobacco that he leaves on the living room floor begins to upset Mahmut. On the other side, Yusuf feels excluded in a place where he is not allowed to smoke, use the main bathroom or watch television freely.
Though many scenes in Distant are shot in interiors (Mahmut’s apartment), there are also multiple scenes beautifully depicting the city of Istanbul. These are not typical urban images (with busy districts and crowded streets), but quite peculiar renderings of open space emphasizing solitariness and void. Caught in the rare white of a snow storm, Istanbul appears to be barren and deserted. In one scene, for example, as Yusuf walks down by the docks (he looks for a job at sea), the camera follows him through the snow and comes upon a ship that is rusted, half sunken and tilted to one side. The ship stands there, in the words of one critic, like "some relic of a forgotten civilization or a frozen mammoth" (Lane 2004). The sense that these images of open space convey is that of inaction and stasis. Everything in the city appears to be abandoned and frozen in time.
In this way, both open and closed spaces are characterized by a sense of paralysis and loss of motion. Once the symbol of freedom and mobility, Istanbul gradually turns into a constraining territory for Yusuf which is not much different from the small town where he escaped from. Beneath its eye-catching charm, the city is aloof and uninviting. As Yusuf’s awkward attempts to communicate with others fail, he feels increasingly lonely and excluded not only in Mahmut’s apartment, but in Istanbul as well. Similarly, Mahmut feels increasingly disoriented by both his ex-wife’s approaching departure and Yusuf’s unwelcome arrival. Both journeys take place against his will and make him feel more and more alienated from the life that he has established for himself at Istanbul. In the end, the sense that Distant conveys is that of "entrapment" in an engulfing space without any prospects of going elsewhere, since there is no elsewhere. Characters seem to carry an internal sense of boredom and provinciality everywhere they go. The small town is not something that one can put behind by going to distant places. Drawing upon the claustrophobic side of home and belonging, Ceylan’s films illustrate the sense of spatial entrapment with powerful visual symbols. In his earlier films, recurring images of an upturned turtle entrapped in its own "home" served as a symbol for constraining belonging and spatial confinement. In Distant, the painstaking procedure of killing a little mouse captured in a mouse-trap in Mahmut’s kitchen takes over this role and turns into one of the most "captivating" images of the film.
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