Synopsis
Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.
Votre Filmothèque
Cast
- Doğu DemirkolSinan
- Murat Cemcirİdris
- Bennu YıldırımlarAsuman
- Hazar ErgüçlüHatice
- Serkan KeskinSüleyman
- Tamer LeventRecep
- Akın Aksuİmam Veysel
- Ahmet Rıfat ŞungarAli Riza
- Kubilay Tunçerİlhami
- Öner Erkanİmam Nazmi
- 100
Variety
Even more than in his previous film, Ceylan and his fellow scriptwriters (wife Ebru Ceylan along with Akın Aksu, also acting) develop astonishingly complex spoken recitatives that weave philosophy, religious tradition, and ethics together into a mesmerizing verbal fugue. - 100
CineVue
The Wild Pear Tree isn’t a showy or boldly radical work, this is still Ceylan’s brand of poetic landscapes and intimate dramas, but it does represent an intriguing artistic progression, so any claims of ‘more of the same’ are redundant. - 100
The Guardian
The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie. - 100
The Telegraph
Ceylan expertly draws your eye and ear to the drama behind the drama, and gives the most gently naturalistic scenes the weight and grain of visions. The word visionary has been flogged by the film business to the point of redundancy, but with The Wild Pear Tree, Ceylan reminds us he has earned every letter of it. - 91
The Film Stage
The staggering emotional payoff — a transcendental moment so beautiful in its simplicity that the previous three hours of seriousness appear to melt away — is worth every last minute. - 90
Village Voice
Ceylan delivers what might be his funniest, most politically poignant work yet. It also happens to be achingly personal. - 83
IndieWire
Rise to the challenge, and payoff awaits on the other side: a formulaic story transformed into something more perceptive and profound. If only more family dramas took such care to get the details right. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Slow and surprisingly talky, the three hours of the film do not exactly fly by, and the experience is similar to plunging into a long novel (the hero is a budding novelist) laced with philosophy, religion, politics and moral puzzles. The final sequences are worth the wait, though, bringing together the story’s many threads and offering the classic closure of a young man coming to terms with his identity.