|
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia review
:. Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
:. Starring: Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel
:. Running Time: 2:30
:. Year: 2011
:. Country: Turkey
|
Have you ever wondered how a Turkish thriller would look like? Well, at least we now know that under Nuri Bilge Ceylan's helm, it turns into a dark and little masterpiece, which creates its own genre rules. Far from his previous works but preserving their pace and formal beauty, Once upon a time in Anatolia marks a new direction for the Turkish filmmaker who here appears less distant while addressing the paradoxes of the human soul. Despite a slow paced narrative and pretty basic production values, this highly demanding film delivers a lesson in cinema, supported by a nuanced and subtle direction.
For 90 minutes, the film stretches during a night in Anatolia. We follow a team of investigators, led by an arrogant prosecutor and including a skeptical doctor, as they look for a body that has been buried in a field by two suspects. The two men take the police officers from one fountain to another, wandering along country roads, while lightning strikes in the background. An electric tension bathes that part of the film (the less successful remaining 45mn taking place in the aftermath of this morbid journey), the group looking lost and isolated in this vast scenery. The night is particularly ghoulish, the wind feeling like ghosts breathing into the night while rocks seem to look like figures eager to deliver a message.
Having found shelter in the house of a local mayor, the protagonists are, again, stuck in the dark, due to a power shortage, and start talking about cemeteries and mortuaries. This search for a body suddenly turns into the search for a meaning, as illustrated by the story that the prosecutor tells the doctor about a woman announcing she will die mysteriously, right after giving birth to her child.
The filmmaker uses the conversations between his characters to make them reveal their inhumanity, their flaws and the dark side of their soul. The investigator tells the suspect "You need to deserve your cigarette" underlining that everything has to be earned during this quest. Does he really deserve to smoke? We will have to wait until a rainy morning to finally find out where the body lays. During the investigation of the crime scene, we will realize that those men will not find salvation as the darkness fades into the light; quite the contrary, the light will emphasizes their weaknesses: We see a scrupulous soldier trying to calculate how many miles they traveled in order to determine where the boundaries of the local districts are, while another one admits having forgotten to bring a body bag, which would have proved to be useless anyway, as their car isn't suited to carry a body.
All these obstacles that are blocking the investigation are created by men themselves, the resulting situations being just present to emphasize their shortcomings.
Mr. Ceylan brushes a tough portrait of his fellow citizens, presenting them like self-important people who think they are essential to society. Through the eyes of the doctor, he shows us a nation aspiring to become a modern European country but isn't really sure if it will be ready to get out of its cocoon.
Moland Fengkov
 Movie Reviews: Foreign Films
Reviews 2012 - present
Reviews 1998 - 2012
|
|
