Climates

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It's one of the great movies on the vicissitudes of love, commitment, and attraction.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The beauty of the Turkish film Climates, a small but indelible masterpiece, is more than skin-deep. No 2006 film meant more to me. It's as sharp and lovely as the best Chekhov short stories.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Exquisitely structured, pitiless study of a middle-aged man trapped in a stagnant emotional weather pattern.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

Ceylan examines human relationships with an eye for details and a soul for the big picture.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Though Climates lacks "Distant's" haunted, poetic melancholy, it has a vivid, sensual texture that's unmistakably Ceylan's. He's one of those rare directors who doesn't need a credit for identification.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

This film paints a haunting portrait of existential solitude, one in which the images speak louder and often more forcefully than do any of the words.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A terrific movie in the Antonioni tradition, Climates confirms 47-year-old Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as one of the world's most accomplished filmmakers--handling the end of a relationship and the cloud of human confusion rising from its wreckage as if the subject had never before been attempted.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's something of a family affair -- only this time, instead of casting his relatives in the leading roles, Ceylan has cast himself and his real-life wife, Ebru, as Isa and Bahar. And if, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, such a decision might foster a mood of lurid home-movie voyeurism, both Ceylans are such commanding and subtly expressive performers that any charges of nepotism here are as erroneous as in the storied collaborations of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

An intimate drama that views the deterioration of a relationship from the inside out. Moving from summer through fall and concluding in winter, it's minimalist cinema that turns on subtle emotion rather than narrative and demands the audience's full attention.

Empire Patrick Peters

Making masterly use of sound and image, this is a desperately sad study of the difficulty people have to communicate and commit in an increasingly insular world.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's more admirable than enjoyable, beautifully crafted and artfully unpleasant.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

This is contemplative moviemaking, with its deliberate pace, often static scenes and emphasis on direct sound. The director keeps the dialogue pared to the bone.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Winner of a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the quiet, solemn Climates is a bit like those towering ancient columns that Isa photographs to show his class. The fragmented architecture is beautiful and striking, but also extremely dated.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

As with "Distant," the dialogue is minimal, the takes are long, the narrative is laconic (too much so for many viewers, I imagine) and the cinematography is painterly.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Admittedly, the setting does heighten interest, but this film is much more than an ideational travelogue.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

We realize that this romance, like the beautiful land, is doomed almost inevitably to earthquake fissures, to irreversible change. But rather than making us despondent, Climates leaves us peacefully philosophical.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Contrary to what you may read elsewhere, Climates is not a masterpiece, a word that gets pompously thrown around a lot at pictures few paying customers actually want to see. It is, rather, a meticulous study of a crumbling relationship, marked by many luminous small moments and a startling interruption of violent eroticism.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

There's much to admire here, but less to like.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Like Ceylan's earlier films, Climates is as gorgeous as it is self-consciously composed, but an hour and 40 minutes is a long time to spend with Isa, forget three seasons.

TV Guide Ken Fox

What is interesting is Ceylan's depiction of life among the Turkish upper-middle classes, a world rarely seen in international art-house cinema outside his own films.

Variety Derek Elley

Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

Under Ceylan's dull direction and the equally leaden editing, technical contributions are lackluster and straight-forward. Similar to the script, they only serve to distend an undernourished central story.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

The husband learns nothing, and his monstrous behavior makes the movie relentlessly downbeat. No one, including the viewer, achieves catharsis.

Film Threat Phil Hall

The film is professionally made but a thorough bore at every imaginable level.