Le tre scimmie

Three Monkeys proved to me that Turkish cinema can rub shoulders with the very best in contemporary cinema.

It has a certain maturity and mastery of the medium even if it follows the patterns of Tarkovsky, Terrence Mallick and Zvyagintsev, with its ability to externalize the internal feelings of individuals and catapult those feelings in context with the well-chosen exteriors—sometimes natural environments and sometimes man-made structures. It's a film that makes the capability of a director and art director stand out even to a village idiot viewing cinema.

The title of the film does refer to the proverbial three monkeys; one who refuses to hear, one who refuses to see, and one who refuses to speak. It is an interesting contemporary tale revolving around three adults that make up a Turkish urban nuclear family. The husband drives the car of a politician to make a living, the wife works in a kitchen of a large establishment, and their adult son is a student dreaming of owning a car. It is a tale that could take place in Turkey or any other part of the world suggesting that tales of individual angst fall within some external matrix that a viewer can either glimpse or reject as a cosmic play of dice.

The three "monkeys" are a husband, wife and son living a cohesive, stable life. A fourth character is a typical creepy politician whose actions disrupt the tranquil life of the cohesive trio by a chain of lies, deceit, lust and avarice—all brought about by the ripple effect of an external request. Here is a tale of three essentially good people who become entwined in actions that threaten to break up their happy but mundane middle-class lives.

What is the external request that leads to the domino effect on the family? The politician falls asleep while driving a sedan and knocks down an unknown person on a remote road and the incident is noticed by a passing car. To preserve his political chances at the soon-to-be-held elections, he requests his regular driver to take the rap and go to prison for the crime he did not commit, while the politician promises to continue paying his salary and provide a large sum at the completion of his jail term. The first "monkey" gets hooked to the suggested plan that he hears.

The son dreams of a family car that could be acquired with an advance on the politician's final payment to his father and goads his mother to meet the politician with the request. And you soon have two other "monkeys" trapped by their own innocent actions that spiral into grievous crimes because they choose not to see, hear or speak. Interestingly, each of the three is essentially a well-meaning, ethical individual. However, the external request of a politician to the head of the family of the trio opens up vistas for three good persons to choose a deviant path they might not have chosen otherwise.

The filmmakers go on to suggest that the pattern could spillover to upset another sedate life of a good man at the end. Those affected do not seem to learn from history. The cosmic tale carries on like a Shakespearean or Tolstoyan tragedy, even as dark clouds gather over the magical landscape on the coasts of the Marmara Sea (Black Sea) captured with the digital magic of Gokhan Tiryaki (the cinematographer of Ceylan's Climates as well). Are we individuals truly in control of what happens to us in life? This is the implicit question the film asks of the viewer. Do events in our life force us take paths we never would have taken otherwise? Do we learn from our mistakes or prefer to make bigger mistakes like a "monkey"? Ironically, the film itself is a product of another family—but this one is incredibly talented. The husband and wife team of Nuri Bilge Ceylan (director, editor, and writer of Three Monkeys, and actor of his earlier films Distant and Climates) and Ebru Ceylan (writer and art director of Three Monkeys, actor of Distant and Climates and an award-winning short-filmmaker) team up with Ercan Kesal (actor in Three Monkeys, playing the politician in the movie) to write up this interesting film.

The story is only a small part of the film's broad enjoyment spectrum. Take the art direction—-the building in which the trio live looks imposing at the start of the movie. Only towards the end of the movie as the lives of the individuals fall apart you see the building has an imposing front but is actually a poor tenement with a fabulous view. The railroad becomes a flight path to freedom from the drudgery of the house, but tenants of the house need to cross physical (symbolic) barriers to reach the station. Interestingly, the head (and face) of the son poking out of the train form the poster of the film a shot that is repeated with differing expressions as the film progresses.

In this film, the husband-wife team of the Ceylans stays behind the camera. They introduce a TV actor Hatice Aslan who plays Hacer, the mother/wife role in the film. The performance is nothing short of spectacular. The sudden action of kicking up of her shoes while sitting and breaking into smiles of freedom is unforgettable; the true implications of the scene revealed to the viewer only much later.

Turkish cinema has thrown up great filmmakers. Yilmaz Guney was my favorite Turkish filmmaker from that country. Now I have added Ceylan (and his talented wife) to that list. Guney took up subjects that mirrored politics and got into trouble for that. Ceylan appears to be apolitical except for his dark universal swipe at politicians as a tribe. Or is he?

The three monkeys in the title of this film refer to both the classic "See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil" maxim and to the compact family of three depicted in the film. These three characters are Eyup, his wife Hacer, and their son Ismail. Each of these people seem to live by the maxim of the monkeys so much that they hardly talk to each other at all. Events unfold with a tragic inevitability after Eyup agrees to confess to a crime committed by his boss Servet to shield him from political disgrace in exchange for a large payoff. The shattered family then attempts to go on about their lives as if nothing had ever happened, even when more things do happen. Problems that normally would be relatively routine when faced by a united family thus become a devastating cycle that threatens to destroy their lives.

The material here is good but it likely would have devolved into histrionic melodrama in the hands of a less restrained director. Ceylan is a minimalist and as such he tends to allow the actions of the character to speak for themselves. In a way the lack of exposition puts the viewer in a similar situation to that of the family; we don't know exactly what they are thinking either.

Ceylan's greatest strength is in visuals: his landscapes look unlike anyone else's. The colors are often desaturated; I generally think this visual technique is a mistake but it looks great in his films. Like all Ceylan films, Three Monkeys is worth seeing for the indescribable visuals alone, but this film in particular also offers a perfectly executed family tragedy. Ceylan really outdid himself this time, this is one of the best films of the decade.

Extremely emotional. Sadness, happiness, love, family relationships, in a brief, you can find every emotion that we have in the movie. Well acting, good screenplay, enough picture. One of my favorite.

The first and the most important thing to say about "Uc Maymun" is already said at the 2008 Festival de Cannes; the directing is incredibly strong! The usage of every cinematographic material shows and once again proves that Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a great auteur of our time. I really don't agree with the critiques that have been made about how too technical and photographical the movie is. Simply because it's not. It's just irritating as life itself. It's reality what was filmed and so; very irritating as it should have been. It's the first movie of the auteur in which act professional actors; therefore it tastes and seems different somehow. Plus the way it's made was meant to be different than the former ones as far as I am concerned. Yet I don't think that the movie lacks the sincerity which always has been the most important reason for me to like the movies of N.B.C. Actually I think that it is more movie-like this time; thus experimental for the director, no need to say.

There is something about Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films that have always set itself apart from other films on the international stage: its ability to resonate with an audience. Although set in Turkey his films' story lines have the ability to connect with an audience from any region while also being able to utilize a major city's inner-turmoil via its transmitting landscapes, exhaustive loneliness and its sheer beauty. And "Three Monkeys" is no exception.

The story is the most complex and inter-connected of Ceylan's career and because of this he opts to use actors with previous experience for the first time (outside of his actress wife in "Climates"). A series of hidden secrets and unfolding lies keeps the family distant and increasingly torn apart from each other until a breaking point brings them back full circle. The "best-laid-plans" aspect of the film gives it a tinge of film-noir as it uses this device to present the family in its wondrous failures.

Having seen each of Ceylan's previous works my first expectation before seeing this film was breathtaking cinematography (and it did not disappoint in the least). Seeing Ceylan present the wondrous rain clouds that burst and crash above the dusty traffic-filled streets of Istanbul throughout this film as well as many of his others never gets old. "Three Monkeys" itself starts with a beautiful presentation of a car riding hidden paths that circle inside a forest's midnight darkness before it disappears from sight completely perhaps evoking questions as to why anyone would need to make their way through such landscapes at such an hour but at the risk of being cliché: "c'est la vie".

The use of established actors provided some consolation for the audience who could believe and connect with three characters who slowly went about their lives of self-destruction and self-deception until all secrets and lies were laid out on the table for the whole family to bear. The father who went through great hardship for his family finds only heartbreak following his efforts, the guilt-ridden son who is haunted by the memory of a younger brother whose tragic death he feels responsible for and must now deal with the knowledge of a mother who has found the love and affection of another man who is simply using her. The wide array of camera angles and mixture of shots of varying range and clarity enables Ceylan to convey the feelings and thoughts of his characters while still allowing the audience to follow the foreshadowing plot.

The usual Ceylan trademarks resonate within "Three Monkeys" both technically and spiritually while also showing his audience that with each time-out and with each film he can take his stories and characters into a completely new direction while taking his audience along for the ride. The slow, motionless shots give the audience a silence that swells with his characters' feelings and showcases a family's ability to communicate without words. This film has the ability to simultaneously show an audience a beautiful city and its inhabitants while also revealing real-life characters who let their emotions go to the extreme due to jealousy, rage and lust which can be found within anyone in the world.

Note: At Cannes, Ceylan picked up the Best Director prize and the film was subsequently chosen by Turkey to be its nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.