By John Corrado

The latest work from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014, About Dry Grasses is an involving character drama that uses its lengthy running time to absorb us in the lives its of its subjects.

The film follows Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), a middle-aged art teacher stationed in Eastern Anatolia who lives in the remote village with his roommate and fellow teacher Kenan (Musab Ekici). Samet has his own style of teaching, bristling at the interference of rule-bound administrators.

A precocious female student in his grade eight class named Sevim (Ece Bağcı) has noticeably become a teacher’s pet for Samet, but to what extent? Allegations of inappropriate contact between teachers and students lead to an investigation, but are they erroneous or is there something more to the complaints?

Samet and Kenan also meet Nuray (Merve Dizdar, who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her role), a teacher in a nearby village who becomes close to both of them. This is a film that establishes a mood through both its setting and length, right from the extended opening shot of Samet trudging through the snow to get to work. The atmosphere is cold and chilly. The characters sit huddled at night in cabins to keep warm.

The screenplay, which Ceylan co-wrote with his wife Ebru and actor Akin Aksu, lets this unfold across an over three-hour running time. This allows us to really explore the dynamics between these characters by listening to them talk and watching them interact with each other for extended periods of time. The film unfolds as a series of highly literate conversations – expertly performed by the cast – that aren’t exactly circular in nature, but keep continuing because they are trying to get at the essence of something deeper.

By the end of the 198 minute running time, it does feel like we have spent a long, cold, lonely winter with these characters, but this feeling of time sluggishly passing is intentional, not that the film is ever boring. We are left with unanswered questions about certain intentions and what exactly these characters meant to each other, but the film is meant to be this way. We have lived a season with these characters by the end of it, and in its own way, this makes for immersive cinema.

Film Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)

About Dry Grasses opens exclusively in theatres in limited release on March 1st, including TIFF Lightbox in Toronto. It’s being distributed in Canada by Sphere Films.