The Wild Pear Tree
The Cinema Guild | Release Date: January 30, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueMartyn ConterioMay 19, 2018
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. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 19, 2018
The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 19, 2018
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. Read full review
100
VarietyJay WeissbergMay 18, 2018
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. Read full review
91
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 3, 2018
At three hours without much obvious plot, the movie is, no doubt, a bit of a butt-number, though there’s enough wry humour, visual delight, and psychological insight here to more than reward an open-minded viewer. Read full review
91
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 19, 2018
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. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 7, 2019
The movie is undeniably long, talky and dense, but it is never uninteresting. You might call it slow too, though at the risk of mischaracterizing the speed of its verbiage and the dizzying complexity of its ideas. Read full review
90
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 24, 2018
Ceylan delivers what might be his funniest, most politically poignant work yet. It also happens to be achingly personal. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 10, 2019
The echoes of Chekhov are earned, the strains of Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor don’t feel at all out of place. The final sequence leaves Sinan and the audience at a crossroads between giving up and carrying on, as absurd as the latter is and always will be. That choice haunts everyone: The hero, his creator, and all of us watching in the dark. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 26, 2019
The Wild Pear Tree may be the one film out there with the uncanny, gorgeously ruminative ability to take you away from everything cluttering a Chicagoan’s head space right now. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comTomris LafflyJan 30, 2019
Throughout its majestic 188-minute running time, there is a profound sum of self-negotiation in Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree; a slow-burning and unexpectedly humorous character study as reflective and impenetrable as anything in Ceylan’s filmography. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownJan 28, 2019
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film takes a leisurely approach to narrative that’s both intensely dialogical and transfixingly visual. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 19, 2018
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. Read full review
80
Film ThreatFilipe FreitasFeb 20, 2019
The film’s narrative arc demands attentiveness. It’s dense and talky, with a lot to absorb and almost no time to reflect. The deep meaning of the words blended with the pure, hyper-realistic filmmaking style of Ceylan, makes it a very rich experience. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJan 29, 2019
The unapologetic, sometimes heavy-handed literariness of The Wild Pear Tree is leavened by hints of grim comedy and sharp, if subtle, social criticism. Read full review
80
Screen DailyDan FainaruMay 19, 2018
Ceylan’s script reveals a stagnating provincial world, characters all handling their thwarted hopes and inevitable resignations in their own way. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungMay 19, 2018
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. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerNov 23, 2018
Sinan’s not a particularly fascinating character (Demirkol’s deliberately low-energy performance is a bit too unvaried for me). But the film comes alive in its attention to detail. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJan 28, 2019
You find yourself gradually engulfed, as if by rising waters, and it seems only fair to report that The Wild Pear Tree lasts for more than three hours. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubLawrence GarciaJan 28, 2019
At its best, The Wild Pear Tree captures not just the feeling, but also the process of coming to terms with one’s place in society — and that, if nothing else, requires patience. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 25, 2018
It’s a beautiful, moving finale but it hardly needed all the digressions en route, which basically amount to Ceylan taking the very long (and often scenic) way round to arrive at the simple conclusion that the wild pear does not, after all, fall so very far from the tree. Read full review
67
TheWrapBen CrollMay 24, 2018
In his 2014 Palme d’Or winner, Ceylan unpacked thorny issues of ethics and morality with a surgeon’s steady patience; he employs a similar approach here, only the territory is much less fertile. Read full review
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