The competition continues to heat up at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, with various contenders staking their claim on the Palme. It may be time for Nuri Bilge Ceylan to win his second. About Dry Grass is his seventh competition feature, including 2014's grand champion Winter Sleep. Then again, the critics have reached a consensus so far, with the favorite film being Jonathan Glazer's return to feature filmmaking after a decade-long pause, The Zone of Interest. Kaouther Ben Hania's follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Man Who Sold His Skin is less acclaimed but might yet prove an awards contender. Four Daughters is one of two documentaries in competition.
For this 'Cannes at Home' adventure, let's look at some of these directors' past successes, their best films according to yours. There's Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Glazer's Under the Skin, and Ben Hania's Beauty and the Dogs…
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011) Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Before Winter Sleep took the Palme, the modern master of Turkish cinema blessed Cannes with an even greater triumph. It was in 2011, the year of Malick's The Tree of Life, when Ceylan proposed a deviation to a filmography that, until then, had been mostly made up of stately character dramas, purviews into domestic purgatories. This time, the director opts for a procedural of sorts, where his patient style could break apart in lyrical reveries. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a study on the criminal motives of disconnected people across the steppes, their loneliness replicated and complemented by the narrative's structure, the exacting shape of this auteur's storytelling.
It's a slippery exercise, slithering inside various person's opaque mental states, their identities reduced to their professional place within a murder investigation. Most of them don't even get names. While this happens in text and human interest, the screen is set aflame with painterly sights. Though it lacks some of the besotting textures of Ceylan's early works where the director acted as his own cinematographer, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia lives or dies through the efforts of DP Gökhan Tiryaki. His is a transporting lensing, capturing the epic beauty of the Anatolian landscape but always interested in the ways of visual alienation.
In an investigation of morality into the meaning of truth and the evils inherent to masculine authority, we experience the pull of an artist's beckoning. Watching the film can be a hypnotic experience, immersive for those who surrender to its peculiarities, those ready to capitulate to its demands. Odd anecdotes cycle through the mouths of gruff men, gaining power with each telling like echoes. The precise filmmaking crystalizes distended moments, anodyne gestures turned into epic statements because of the camera's gaze. It's a challenging watch, but it can also be rewarding. If you allow it, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia will haunt you long after the credits roll.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is currently streaming on Kanopy and Mubi. You can also rent the film on Apple TV.
UNDER THE SKIN (2013) Jonathan Glazer
As when the universe came into existence, it all starts in nothing. Abstraction is the cradle of creation, cosmic or cinematic, with sights and sounds beyond comprehension. A pre-verbal cryptogram made only of audiovisual stimuli, Under the Skin is quick to establish its mysterious nature. The sequence slowly coalesces as discernible imagery, a nightmare taking shape before our eyes. And yet, what we see is alien, some unholy intersection of horror and sci-fi that director Jonathan Glazer has come up with to intrigue or seduce us into the void, an abyss that looks back once it's captured our gaze.
From otherworldly emptiness, we arrive on the empty roads of modern Scotland, where a strange woman walks about. She's a nameless figure, a wanderer that may also be a predator in disguise. She's Scarlett Johansson at her most self-effacing, and she's looking for men. Those unlucky enough to fall under her spell will transcend back into the emptiness of the start, their journey scored by Mica Levi's deathly music in a process akin to lustful digestion. Words fail me when describing the hunt's climax, the completion of the prey's fate. It's one of those things you must see to believe, a cinematic miracle that's as beautiful as it is disturbing.
Though, one should note, neither Glazer nor his film, nor really his protagonist, need to leave the realm of humanity to terrify the viewer. Something as simple as doing nothing in a beach scene can leave a scar on the spectator, bloody inaction forever unhealed, never forgotten. And that doesn't even get us to the most interesting meeting between the woman and a man, and later between the woman and herself. There's a sea of bloody mass and mysterious envoys in motorcycle gear, and there are arrhythmic stylings and bold as fuck filmmaking throughout. The known becomes unknown as we go deeper into Glazer's imagination, and the central enigma, somehow, becomes part of us.
Under the Skin is streaming on HBO Max, Kanopy, and DirecTV. You may also find the picture on most major platforms, available to rent and purchase.
BEAUTY AND THE DOGS (2017) Kaouther Ben Hania
Like many documentary filmmakers making the jump into narrative cinema, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania sustained this transitory gesture through the representation of a real story. Before Beauty and the Dogs, the closest to fiction formulas had been mockumentary, but this outright debut to the world of drama was marked by an audacious approach almost reminiscent of New Romanian Cinema. The film considers only a few hours, from night to dawn, and comprises nine chapters, each a marathon-long take. There are no cuts, no stationary observations, only the prowling of a curious camera.
But, before going into what that formal gambit invokes, we should establish the situation portrayed. Taking cues from a book by Meriem Ben Mohamed and Ava Djamshidi, the director twists reality to better suit her dramatic needs. Instead of a woman in the latter half of her twenties, our protagonist shall be Mariam, a young student. Instead of a trusted fiancé, her companion through hell shall be Youssef, a handsome stranger. Beyond that, the general details are the same – policemen rape her, and the survivor must contend with a system that protects itself before it protects the citizens. Justice demands a rape report from the hospital, but that document can only be obtained through a police order, forcing Mariam to appeal to the same authorities that brutalized her.
It's a sick scenario, made more asphyxiating by the absence of cuts. You have no space to breathe, no respite from the overwhelming tension as if trapped alongside Mariam in the horror. The central violence is never shown in full, demanding the spectator trust the woman's testimony, effectively putting us in the spot of the various officials who must assess the truth. The strategy of identification results in spiky tonalities, but the device's limitations don't always benefit the protagonist, obscuring interiority. Thankfully, young Mariam Al Ferjani makes up for it with a fearless performance, evolving from catatonic stupor to cold fury. The supporting cast isn't at her level, but the central thesis of Beauty and the Dogs survives such setbacks.
Beauty and the Dogs is currently streaming on Kanopy and the Criterion Channel. You can also find it on Apple TV, Google Play, Youtube, and Vudu.
What are your opinions on these three very distinct filmmakers?