Once Upon A Time In Anatolia [Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da] (Ceylan, 2011)

[shariqq]

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey | 2011
157 min

Unnecessarily long and self-conscious to a fault, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is, on the surface, a police procedural of a murder.The murderer has confessed to his crime, and the movie begins with him leading a team of policemen, a doctor, the prosecutor and sundry to the scene where the body was disposed. It ends two and a half hours later with some insight into some of the people involved and a fair understanding of what may have transpired. While the movie is shot extremely well in the director’s recognizable style (numerous wide-angle shots of landscapes, many that include clouds), there is a deliberate formulaic feel to many sequences. Case-in-point: the ineffective final scene. By a less-recognized director, this movie would have been a commendable effort. However, for the well-regarded Ceylan, this is a step-down. The opening two-shot prelude of the movie though is a master's work.

My Rating --> 3.5 of 5

[kaytee]

If you enjoy visuals then just visit the directors photography website http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/photography/photography.php?mid=1. This film will frustrate and tire you like it does with all the characters involved. The film offers a weak closure which blew my head off coz after investing almost 160 mins on a film I should not be expected to go and read or discuss about the film to get closure.

[fizz]

You will have to wait very long and follow very intently the plot and dialogues of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia to catch onto what the film is really about. On the surface it presents itself as a simple police procedural, but the film has bigger ambitions, a darker undertone and more layered subtext that reveals itself using a slow boil approach.

You may remember the director’s previous film – the exquisitely shot but testing Three Monkeys from a few years ago. Nuri Ceylan Bilge has learned nothing of the art of brevity since then, but his filmmaking has also not lost any of its deft touches in creating painterly scenes, presented via fantastic looking shots using the magic of cinemascope. Scenery after all plays a major role in the plot, which follows a troupe consisting of police investigators, the town doctor, a prosecutor and the criminal in their midst, travelling the barren countryside together to seek out the burial spot of a murder victim.

What makes the film very watchable, and slowly gives way to its central themes (the film hints at a few) are the conversations that all of these men have with each other. Their topics – diverse, unstructured but never dull – range from being light-hearted (about buffalo cheese and Clark Gable) to morbid (death and its variations), but all of it adds up to reveal character motivations, prejudices and cynicisms shaped by living in a town where the folk cannot reason because of their small mindedness. The tell-tale signs of this are not immediately certain and this may frustrate viewers who look for more direct interpretations of situations that are seemingly uncomplicated. The director however is precise. His scenes function to draw you in (the autopsy towards the end being the prime example) and this sometimes works against the film because these scenes are set up in a way that gives them the mistaken air of being revelatory even when they are not.

Anatolia is certainly challenging – we don't know who the central character is supposed to be (this is answered in the last thirty minutes) and know nothing about the crime either till about midway through the story – but the rewards outweigh whatever you have to invest in it as a viewer.  The depth of the story keeps building as long as the men keep talking, and talk they do, in elaborate, stagey conversations that give you a sense of the self-perceived might that their position within society gives them. When it eventually ends, the film feels like a long journey, which in some ways it is. It stays with you long after the lights come on, and this is both its achievement and intended purpose. It becomes like a fable. You are almost expected to talk about it to others by starting with "Once upon a time..."

Rating: 4/5