Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da

Peering through the monotony of everyday lives to pose larger questions about purpose & existence, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a quiet, somber & reflective mood piece that finds beauty in the mundane and expertly employs its police procedural structure as a narrative framework to unearth deeper existential insights.

Co-written & directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the plot covers a night & day in the lives of people involved in a murder investigation but doesn't adhere to any of its genre's conventions. Ceylan's composed & controlled direction keeps a firm check on every single aspect, and provides an expansive canvas for its characters to develop.

From the distant shots of the vast Anatolian steppes to detailed close-ups of its characters, Cinematography definitely stands out, whether it's the images filmed during nighttime or captured in daylight. Editing is methodical throughout, deliberately unfolding the plot at a silent & glacial pace. And sincere performances from its entire cast makes sure that the interest is never lost.

Overall, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is an ingeniously crafted & patiently narrated drama that presents the Turkish filmmaker in total control of his craft and, despite its intimidating 157 mins runtime, manages to be an utterly absorbing & engrossing experience. Its slow & undramatic approach can be too frustrating for some but for the rest, it is as rewarding a film such as this can get. One of the best films of the decade.

Nuir Bilge Ceylon's "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" is the complete antithesis to the conventional American crime drama, which routinely features detectives with matinée-idol looks, an assortment of plot twists and red herrings, and a series of breath-bating car chases to keep the masses from bolting for the exits.

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" has none of these. In fact, it features a cast of balding, sagging, middle-aged men - a police chief, a prosecutor, a doctor and two murder suspects - who have gone on a night- long search, through the dour planes of Turkey, in search of a buried body. As the night drags on, the men engage in a series of long, angst- ridden conversations that reveal how their constant exposure to and intimate involvement with the sordid and depraved aspects of the human condition have made them pessimistic and cynical about life. Yet, in the end, at least one of the characters finds a way, through a bit of professional compromise, to bring a little less darkness into the world.

Meanwhile, at every step in the drama, the movie drains the process of crime detection of all its "glamour."

It's a long - 157-minutes long, in fact - methodical, and frequently ponderous journey into the heart of darkness, but fine performances and a complete lack of conventionality make it a trip worth taking.

I just watched this at the Melbourne Film Festival, I found it quite good. It terms of narrative it was quite a mysterious journey for the audience, the audience as the picture began were in the dark and begun discovery the means of the story non-overtly. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, But that of course applies to all forms of narrative may it be Barry Lyndon where you know the fate of Barry but are still enthralled with the story or a movie such as this, some of the audience (Many people left the theatre through the course of the film) can feel tedious with this approach accompanied with various long Tarkovsky-esque takes, however I think it was quite interesting, it's as if a camera just accompanied this search of the everyday case of a local Turkish law enforcement. I had some preconceptions about the film, I thought it was going to be quite stark and gloomy, in the likes of No Country For Old Men (Which is a brilliant film), however it proved to have a myriad of scenes with humour and it acted like a beacon of light for the sombre setting the movie is placed in. This movie had some amazing cinematography, great lighting of the night scenes, only lit by the headlights of the cars and some great shots really capturing the audience. I think the film lacked a score, if I were the director I would have put in a very ambiance oriented score like in Tarkovsky's Solaris, to really unsettle the viewer because it really would strengthen the ambiguity experienced by the characters and audience alike. This film was quite good, yes it is a slow burner, but I think the strangeness of the story and it's concealed nature manages to outweigh it's tediosity. 8/10 from me.

Anatolia, simply the rest of Turkey other than Istanbul. It is a place where the hospitality is served as the only gift with respect and honor. The fascinating thing is to see such sort of story which takes place in this land of world where hundreds of nations have existed and vanished throughout the history, by a magnificent director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I can understand people who have harsh criticism about these kind of arts so called as ''film-noir''. It may seem too slow or simply lack of action or someone can even question how other people can enjoy by watching so called cliché ' a man looking beyond the horizons all along the movie'. The point is no body has to like this sort of art. For instance it is like reading a book. Consider some pages of a book when there is no action but the author speaks instead of the hero of the book. So by watching ' a man looking beyond the horizons' makes me question what he could think or makes me put myself in the middle of the situation. And I really feel like I am that guy in the movie. But I really really and really feel like I am that guy, when the movie is so perfectly directed and so perfectly portrayed.

We can call this movie as a bridge or as a milestone in Ceylan's career. It is as simple as that, there is a very obvious change in Ceylan's directing and writing after seeing that movie. Having seen that, we can make this comparison like Before or After Once upon a Time in Anatolia. It is not 'three monkeys' or 'the climates' or 'the distant', it is obviously another one that carries Nuri Bilge Ceylan's way of directing to the next level.

Another must see...

I think this is the best movie of 2011 so far. A very different, but brilliantly conceived three part police procedural that is really a character study of two men and how they each deal with the past. In many ways, I had a similar experience here to what I have when I read a really good novel. The characters are rich and complex, often funny, and thoroughly believable. Nothing is crammed down the audience's throat, yet there is so much detail and nuance that it becomes easy to see the two men for the basically good, complex people they are. This is a movie that respects the audience's intelligence. It is also a movie that is easily among the best shot and edited of the year. In fact, it is hard to think of a single thing that I would suggest to improve the film. I have seen other Ceylan films, but nothing of his has ever had the depth, nuance and humanity of this one.