Uzak is a great turkish movie that tells us about “the meaninglessness of life” in a very meaningful way. The story is about two very strong characters, a man and his cousin. the man, mahmut, is a strong character whose life is at distant with peoples around him because his self-prideness, which costs him his married life and his awkward relationship with yusuf, his cousin from a rural village seeking job in Istanbul.

The cast is might not the professional actors (they are nuri’s best friend, wife, mother, and cousin), but their performance, especially for two lead cast, is quiet stunning. Muzaffer Özdemir as mahmut is successful to deliver subtle yet powerful performance as the self-pride man who actually has a good heart but never really know how to response like a normal people in a certain situation. HIs most memorable performance for me is in the closing scene, which i found very beautiful both physically and psychologically. And credit also goes to Mehmet Emin Toprak as he gave us a good performance as Yusuf, a contradiction profile compared to mahmut, he is friendly and shy at the same time, and has a good sense of humor.

Many people said that this film is not for everyone, i am agree and disagree with them. Agree, because the film’s pacing, the pace is really slow and not every people could cope with that, but for me the pacing is couldn’t be any better, it’s just perfectly matched with the very fashionable style of directing of nuri bilge ceylan and darkly beautiful cinematography and wonderful camerawork. And disagree, because this film has a universal theme, an issue that happened to every human being, about relationship with another human being, how you adapt your character to another character or to another society and the consequences.