About Dry Grasses
Memento Distribution | Release Date: February 23, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyJul 25, 2024
The vigorous, masterful script, written by the director his wife and frequent collaborator Ebru Ceylan, counterpoints the extended runtime. The director says he could have made the film longer; remarkably, most viewers will agree. Read full review
100
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsJul 24, 2024
Celiloglu’s carefully calibrated performance, combined with a screenplay which never descents to scurrilous signposting, makes Samet a person of endless literary intrigue – a monster and a martyr trapped inside the same body. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 29, 2024
It’s beautiful work, and not just because it’s beautiful. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 23, 2024
We walk away from the film with a dark empathy for these people, and for ourselves. Read full review
100
The New YorkerJustin ChangFeb 23, 2024
About Dry Grasses may be unhurried, with languid steppe-by-steppe pacing and long, luxuriant, exquisitely sculpted conversations, but it is also nimble, alert, and alive in ways that seem to have taken Ceylan himself by surprise. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comCarlos AguilarFeb 23, 2024
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan spends his latest engrossingly verbose, three-hour opus, “About Dry Grasses,” warning us that every truth is partial as it’s tinged with the teller’s perspective. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonFeb 22, 2024
The effortlessly orchestrated dialogue scenes are riveting, but what’s remarkable is that, no matter how talkative Samet and his cohorts are, they often don’t say what they mean. The characters argue politics, worldviews or how to handle the disturbing accusations leveled against Samet and Kenan at school, but their rhetorical jousting masks unspoken resentments and disappointments. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 21, 2023
About Dry Grasses is part-Chekovian comedy of yearning and male ego, and part-tragedy of a country which stymies the growth of its own citizens. Read full review
92
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 27, 2024
Structured like a quietly grand novel, subtle and elliptical, Ceylan’s film unfolds with Chekhovian grace and a cutting understanding of character. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonFeb 22, 2024
In About Dry Grasses, Ceylan is asking a vital question of himself as well as the audience: What does it mean to be engaged in the world? And if you choose to back away and watch, rather than become involved, is it self-protection, superiority or just cowardice? Read full review
90
TheWrapTomris LafflyMay 21, 2023
It’s a searing, mesmerizing and unforgettably wintry mood piece and character study. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 21, 2023
This is Ceylan at his most limber and mischievous, the filmmaking exhibiting a generosity and curiosity that belies the script’s defense of individualist, even isolationist, living, at whatever cost to one’s own happiness. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 21, 2023
About Dry Grasses is a ravishingly cinematic piece of work that seems designed to spark animated, if not acrimonious, debate. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleMar 1, 2024
There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineDiego SemereneSep 8, 2023
Above all, the film captures how easy it is to deposit too much hope on the few who represent dissent, or freedom, when one is trapped. Read full review
85
The Daily BeastNick SchagerFeb 23, 2024
A stark window into the conflicted soul of [Ceylan's] homeland, whose tensions and schisms are subtly evoked throughout the course of this challenging, if ultimately rich and rewarding, 197-minute import of longing, resentment, compromise, and self-interest. Read full review
83
The Film StageLeonardo GoiMay 30, 2023
One of the greatest mysteries behind Ceylan’s cinema is how his talk-heavy sprawls manage to escape the aloofness of the chamber dramas they so often unspool as. Grasses is another scintillating example of that paradox, a film in which chats do not unfurl so much as detonate. Read full review
83
The PlaylistSavina PetkovaMay 21, 2023
While the Turkish director seems ever-fascinated with gloomy, nihilistic anti-heroes, he does vest more hope in human relationships than usual. Read full review
83
IndieWireSiddhant AdlakhaMay 21, 2023
About Dry Grasses is among the most brilliantly off-putting works to be featured at Cannes in recent years, with so rotten a core that every hint of virtue or even normalcy in the camera’s peripheral vision becomes a tragedy unto itself, simply by way of being ignored. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJul 29, 2024
About Dry Grasses tiptoes around the edge of being suffocatingly verbose, and there are scenes that could stand a tighter edit. Still, the meaty, novelistic writing and exceptional quality of the performances make for a rich and engrossing viewing experience. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 21, 2023
This film, so apparently forbidding and opaque the way many Ceylan films initially are, has in fact something engrossing in its garrulous and wide-ranging quality: a literary quality in fact. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJun 12, 2024
There isn’t a boring frame in the film, even when the scenes involve little more than long conversations between two people. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyFeb 29, 2024
It feels unbalanced, a collection of often-compelling sequences stitched together in a way that is unpersuasive or sometimes simply puzzling. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineKatarina DocalovichFeb 20, 2024
Veteran Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to Anatolia, a place he previously explored in his Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep, in About Dry Grasses. Although Winter Sleep is both more explicitly interested in exploring class dynamics in rural Turkey and more literary than About Dry Grasses (Winter Sleep is an Anton Chekhov adaptation), these two stories could be taking place side by side. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithFeb 22, 2024
About Dry Grasses is characteristically extravagant and tiny at the same time, like a 10-story museum devoted to paper clips. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 21, 2023
The movie goes downhill into predictable territory, finally landing in a soggy quagmire of talkiness and would-be profundity expressed in voiceover at the end. But at least the visuals are nice, with Ceylan’s signature use of snow-capped landscape and wide-angled lensing to the fore. Read full review
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