Uzak, or the unbearable lightness of the ordinary

Abstract

The text explores the notion of urban atmosphere, its ordinary rhythm, and the debilitating effects that it might have on the bodies that breathe through it, by looking at Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s third movie, and first international success, Uzak [2002]. In the first two sections, the theoretical background is laid out, both presenting a ‘tensional’ concept of atmosphere and proposing the employment of the notion of ‘ordinary’ as a way to explore how atmospheres unfold in everyday life. How can we attune to the fleeting consistency of the ordinary, however? The third section makes an argument for the capacity of cinema to do so, mainly drawing from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Lauren Berlant. In the subsequent sections, Uzak is explored by showing how these themes are brought forward through the slow-paced aesthetics of the film.