jamesmartin1995

This may very well be the worst thing I will ever write: a completely artless review with no sense of direction or control. It will not come anywhere near doing justice to the extraordinary film it is praising, and so any kind of forced rhetorical flourish here would be perfunctory and out-of-place. So I apologise in advance. I can only do my best.

'Samsara' (which, if IMDb is to be believed, is a Sanskrit word meaning 'cyclic existence') contains almost not a word of dialogue, and certainly not in any kind of 'narrative' sense. It belongs to a very small niche of films, often given the name of 'pure cinema'. The only films I can even compare 'Samsara' to, however, are a select few that our director, Ron Fricke, has previously worked on: those past masterpieces 'Koyaanisqatsi', 'Chronos' and 'Baraka'. All are utterly distinctive pieces of cinema in their own right, and this new release is no different.

How can I describe 'Samsara'? In cliché, as a profound visual experience? I may have to resort to that later, to even give an inkling of how powerful this film is. As a compilation of stunningly photographed images and sequences, set to a haunting, disconcertingly calculated soundtrack? I refuse to describe any of those images here; it would be a betrayal on my part. They must be witnessed for themselves. Maybe then as a philosophical work? Indeed, I cannot argue with the fact that the philosophical issues it raises are some of the most important facing mankind. I do not and will not pretend to understand everything shown in 'Samsara'; I firmly believe that a viewer cannot actually understand the entire film in any concrete way. That is not to say that, throughout much of the film, we are not intended to feel shame, or guilt, or awe, or reverence. Ron Fricke is not a man without an opinion, and this film is underpinned all the way through with the wealth of emotion that this person feels in considering the world we live in. But he does not preach. His choice of images is subjective, but he raises questions. He does not give answers.

'Samsara' is a film of vast ambition and deep humility. Its aim is no less than exploring the blunt fact of human existence on a wondrous Earth with a selective, but passionate and observant eye, and the societies we have created and separated into, the effect our existence has on the world around us. Yet even this description is reductive. The film's profundity lies in its interaction with the audience. It is a film from which you take away what you have put in. The richness of your experience when viewing 'Samsara' relies heavily on how willing you are to go along with it and recognise what Fricke is trying to show us. Your reaction to it is your own affair, but you will have a reaction. The accumulation of these emotional responses is what makes this film so utterly unforgettable; and indeed, perhaps this is the real reason that this kind of movie is considered to be 'pure cinema'. Because, after all, film (usually) succeeds when it successfully provokes a series of emotional reactions in an audience, and their accumulation. Rarely has a film so perfectly and forcefully played on that fact than 'Samsara'.

It has taken five years of painstaking work to make this film. The love and passion that has gone into its production pours from every image, every carefully composed shot and forcefully edited sequence. I have never sat in a cinema before to watch a new release and witnessed the reaction that 'Samsara' provoked among a cinema audience. The screen went black, the credits began to roll, and the room burst into applause. How could it not do? I sincerely doubt that such a disturbing and rapturous meditation on our planet has been produced before now (and here I consider Baraka, Chronos and Koyaanisqatsi as companion pieces to Samsara, even though they retain their own remarkable individuality).

I came out of the weekend screening of this film knowing three things. The first, that this is the reason I go to the cinema – to witness and experience emotions like that, to witness the reaction of an audience completely bowled over by what they have just seen, especially when we believe we have seen it all, that cinema has nothing new to offer. The second, that I would be paying to see it again on Tuesday. And the third? That 'Samsara', without a shadow of a doubt, is the best film of the year.

When we go to the movies, our usual expectations as viewers consist of being given an interesting plot, to be taken on a journey that (hopefully) enthrals us and provides us with good entertainment. In terms of crime drama, if the plot swings on a murder and a police investigation, we naturally expect to discover who the murderer was, the motive for the crime, how it took place (often revealed in clever twist endings) and how the problems it has created for the characters are resolved.

'Once Upon A Time In Anatolia' is not nearly so simple or conventional. It is, in the most basic of terms, a police procedural. Taking place over one night and the following day, we see the local police, together with a prosecutor who has been dragged from home on the promise that together, they will uncover the corpse of a murdered man, as his killers have confessed and are willing to lead them to the body.

Whereas most filmmakers would spend a great deal of time contriving dialogue and scenarios to explain to their viewers how this crime has occurred and what the reasons for it were, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is not interested in the slightest about this. What he is interested in is exploring how investigations really work: any hint of melodrama is stripped away, to leave only the arduous monotony of the job, the frustrating setbacks and errors, the tired, formal and impersonal language with which crimes have to be reported, and the emotionally draining effects that these combine to impose on the people left to pick up the pieces after a murder.

It is a long, difficult film, and yet for the whole of its running time, it is never anything less than fascinating. Ceylan's idea was an inspired one to begin with, but in other, less confident hands, this movie could easily have been a heavy-handed, soporific exploration of ennui and disillusionment. These two themes are central in the film, but what I wasn't expecting at all was the amount of satiric, deadpan humour – perfectly timed and strangely in keeping with the feel of the film – and the poetry in the visuals. I will not describe their brilliance here, but leave them for you to discover for yourselves.

On the surface, this film is painstakingly slow and strictly unsensational, but the genius of 'Once Upon A Time In Anatolia' lies in the details, and in how subtly and realistically it reveals the inner characters of its protagonists – their frustrations, personal tragedies and cynicism. Throughout the course of the movie, we see one man in particular make the sad progression into the masculine, passionless disillusionment that accompanies loss and age, and which many of his male companions have sunk into already.

Perhaps my favourite part of the film is a sequence in which the team, exhausted for the night, and in need of food and shelter, decide to rest at a nearby village, which is slowly but surely being forgotten by the world around it. There are three stunning scenes in this section: one involving a conversation over dinner between the mayor of the village and his guests, a poetic sequence about beauty and passion, and finally a private, tortured conversation between the prosecutor and a doctor, which will later lead to a painful revelation about the prosecutor's past. And this is what I understand the movie to really be about, once we have delved beyond the ennui and disillusionment: love, time and change.

'Once Upon A Time In Anatolia' is a strange, superb film – at once utterly distinctive, original, mystical, closely observed and quietly moving. You will need patience to sit through it, but believe me, that patience is rewarded in spades. In my humble opinion, this unassuming, eccentric piece of work is one of the best films of the year so far.