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100A Chekhovian tale of major artistic power.
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100Mood, atmosphere, and character are more important than story twists in this unassuming, acutely observant drama.
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100Ceylan, who also served as cinematographer, frames the affecting, unstudied performances in gorgeously chosen shots and nonevents that sometimes teeter on the edge of comedy before knocking us breathless with their emotional power.
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90The film's extraordinary shifts from windswept sorrow (Mahmut watching from a distance as his ex-wife departs Istanbul for a new life in Canada) to deadpan comedy (the cousins' carefully engineered capture of a household rodent) are uniquely, triumphantly their maker's own.
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90A beautifully made, unapologetically artistic piece of work.
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90An arthouse film par excellence, a consummately made study of loneliness and frustration.
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90The compositions are masterful, especially the snow-covered scenes in Istanbul and, most memorably, the spectacle of an overturned ship in the wintry harbor.
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90Straightforward, droll, brutally honest and arresting.
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90The narrative, capped by a brief bad dream and the capture of a mouse, isn't always legible, but it feeds into a monumental, luminous visual style like no other.
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88If "Starsky & Hutch" is your idea of art, keep your distance from Distant, the droll new movie from maverick Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. If, on the other hand, you're searching for something that will remain with you long after leaving the theater, run, don't walk, to Distant.
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80There's also very little dialogue, but what there is is often very funny, and Ceylan is a master of the dead-pan visual gags that reveal volumes about his character.
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80What is most winning about Distant is that it can peer past the grief and find a scrap of comedy. [15 March 2004, p. 154]
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75A movie like this touches everyday life in a way that we can recognize as if Turkey were Peoria. I can imagine a similar film being made in America, although Americans might talk more.
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75Long stretches go by without dialogue or discernible action. But there are significant rewards for those willing to accept the movie's deliberate pace.
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75A minimalist drama that takes its mood from Turkey's wintry terrain and the uneasy relationship between two bullheaded cousins.
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70Thoughtfully orchestrated and filled with visual wit.
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70Such an accurate depiction of cramped spirits, small-mindedness and men unable to make changes in their lives takes its toll. Distant feels as if it's going nowhere in no particular hurry, and finally leaves us distant from its characters.
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60The film might be called a moral travelogue. Instead of showing us mosques and tourist spots in beguiling old Istanbul, it follows a couple of ordinary Turkish men in drab surroundings and affirms that they breathe the same doubt-laden air as much of the rest of the world.