Il était une fois en Anatolie

I watched "Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da" just a couple of hours ago and wanted to write a review immediately before the satisfaction it provides fades away. In one word, it's a marvellous film which should not be missed!

The scenery and the images are fantastic. The journey motif makes it the lives that cross one another familiar. And the acting! It totally blew my mind! It seems as if the director is really relating the story of a group of people without ever making his presence felt. It does not feel like you are watching a film at all but from the very first moment you are taken in by the film.

I want to congratulate Nuri Bilge Ceylan and all those contributors in this manner. This was his first film I've ever watched and I'll watch the rest at once without any delay. I already feel like I've lost a lot of my precious time...

Thanks a lot for this cinematographic marvel, people like you make us realise that cinema is in truth an art; one which keeps mesmerising us all...

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.

This is a terrific film. The cinematography is brilliant, fabulous. The acting is excellent. The dialogue is very natural, sometimes very funny (as in the subtitle quote in the heading of this review) sometimes philosophical, but always drawing us into the story and the lives of the characters.

There is a mystery within a mystery., one I understood in the end, the other I am not so sure about - but being left in doubt did not leave me disappointed but rather it left me liking the film even more.

This is an incredibly rich viewing experience even though it depicts relatively impoverished living standards.

It can hardly be called action packed but it is extremely engaging because of how beautifully it is filmed and how well it is written.

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.