Dark, cold and snowy winter days creates a melancholic feeling and makes people to turn inward. It is the time of thinking, reflecting and revisiting the meaning in our lives. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's (NBC) movie Winter Sleep takes place in this gloomy atmosphere, in inland Turkey, Cappadocia.
Of all the past centuries, winter evokes mostly the 19th century; the age of Romanticism. Night, moon, nature, the individual person, love, death, mysticism and longing for the past. If one were to describe the famous German Romantic composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) in one word, it would be "winter". Since, he is very well known by his Song book "Winterreise", D.911, which consists 24 songs (lied).
Nuri Bilge Ceylan knows that too and he choose Schubert's music for his movie for this reason. As a director who is inspired by director Andrei Tarkovsky, NBC carefully selects the music of his movies and make it an inseparable part of it.
Winner of the 2014 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Winter Sleep stars Haluk Bilginer as hostel manager Aydın Bey, Melisa Sözen as his wife Nihal and Demet Akbag as his sister Necla. During the movie, which lasts 3 hours and 16 minutes, Mr. Aydın is a lonely "intellectual" who is going through the winter of his life and marriage, has not become a famous theater actor as expected. He has no other occupation than writing columns in a local newspaper that no one (not even his sister) reads.
Main character is wealthy, as he owns many properties in the region, but instead of dealing with them, he is at his typewriter, writing and thinking. He, his wife, his sister, his friend Suavi, are all in hibernation. They have come to Cappadocia from Istanbul; they have fallen into the inertia of the countryside and fallen into the same sleep as him. And they are alone in themselves.
In cinema, music can be used in many different ways. In Winter Sleep, it is used as a leitmotiv, in a Wagnerian way. Leitmotiv, first introduced to the world of art by romantic era composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) in his operas, refers to the constant repetition of a certain theme throughout a work with a certain person, situation or idea. The 2nd movement (Andantino) of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Major, which begins to play softly when the protagonist Aydın Bey is alone and turns inward, also appears as Aydın Bey's leitmotiv.
Death, as well as being a frequent theme in his own work, caught Schubert too early. And led to one of the most tragic endings in the history of music and art. The Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, which we hear in the movie, is one of the three piano sonatas he composed in the last months before his premature departure at the age of 31 and is considered one of the most important masterpieces of his maturity.
Schubert is best known for his songs (Lied), which he composed based on famous poems of his time such as Goethe or Müller. In these sonatas, a poetic, song-like, story-telling and conversational aspect comes to the fore. From the very first notes of the music, the longings of a person who feels that he is very close to death, who consoles himself by remembering the happy moments of the past and struggles without knowing whether he will be able to reach them again one day, are heard with a serene excitement.
Schubert's music perfectly complements the hibernation of Mr. Aydın and the other characters, as if they have been thrown into the dead ground. So much so that one is left with no choice but to wonder if one day spring will come again, if we will be able to see the sunrise once more.
Schubert Listening Suggestions:
Winterreise D.911 (book of Lied)
Der Tod und Das Madchen D.531 (String Quartet)
Unfinished Symphony D.759 (Symphony)
Erlkönig D.328 (Lied)
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