Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: a road trip to the depths of the human condition

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,  one of the best movies of the year and an extraordinary achievement in filmmaking, is too long and too slow for most audiences.  That’s okay with its director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who says that it’s just fine with him if audiences give up halfway through.  That sounds self-indulgent, but there isn’t a bit of self-indulgence in the film’s 2 hours and 37 minutes.  It’s just that the movie demands that you meet it halfway.  If you don’t, you’re going to be bored.  If you patiently settle in to the tempo of the film, you’ll be as transfixed as I was.

Technically, it’s a police procedural because the cops are solving a crime – and, indeed, by the end, we know who committed the crime and why and how.  But those aren’t the most important questions posed in the movie, which probes fundamental aspects of the human condition – love, betrayal, loss and decency.

As the movie begins, three carloads of men are driving at night through rural Turkey.  They think that they are wrapping up a murder investigation.  Two guys have confessed to killing a man and burying his body out in the sticks.  The cops are taking the culprits out in the country to locate the body.  But the desolate hills and lonely roads all look alike.  One of the killers was asleep on the drive and can’t help find the grave.  The other one was drunk, and he only remembers a nearby fountain and, unhelpfully,  “a round tree”.

They arrive at a potential crime site, but it isn’t the right place.  So they drive to another, but strike out again.  One group argues about the best unpasteurized yogurt.  The men are becoming fatigued and irritable, and, as we listen to snippets of conversation, we learn about each of the characters.  We piece together that they all defer to the prosecuting attorney.  He has brought along a doctor to observe the corpse; the doctor is living a rut-like existence in a nowhere town, not able to move on after a divorce.   The provincial police chief is burned out but puts in long hours to avoid the stress at home (he has a son with a condition, maybe autism or epilepsy).  One affable cop goes to the country and shoots his guns to blow off steam.  One man is haunted by an event in his past.

This first one hour and twenty minutes of the film is at night – lit only by the headlights of the three cars.  Although nothing seems to be advancing the plot, the story is spellbinding as we lean in and try to deconstruct the characters.  By now, the rhythm of the story is hypnotic.

The men take a predawn break in a tiny village.  The mayor gives them food and tea, acting out of Middle Eastern courtesy and also taking advantage of a chance to pitch a public works project to the official from the capital.  The power goes out, and they sit in darkness.  Then a door creaks open and the mayor’s teenage daughter brings in a tray with an oil lamp and glasses of tea.  She is modestly dressed, beautiful and lit only by the lamp.  As she serves tea to each of the exhausted men, we can see that she looks to them like an angel.  They wonder how such beauty could appear out of nowhere and about her fate in such a remote village.  It’s a stunning scene.

Now the convoy sets off again, and dawn breaks.  We see the Anatolian steppe in widescreen desolate vistas like a Sergio Leone spaghetti western.  As in the nighttime scenes, when they get out of their vehicles, the camera shoots the men in extreme long shot, so they are tiny against the endless steppe.  The cinematography is superb.

Forty minutes in, a character begins telling an anecdote to another, but they are interrupted.  After another thirty minutes, the listener presses the teller to finish the story and weighs in with some questions of his own.   Near the end of the movie, the two revisit the story.  This time the teller of the anecdote connects the dots and finally understands a pivotal moment in his own life.  This moment, drawing on profound acting by Taner Birsel, is raw and searing.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia won the jury prize at Cannes.  I felt well rewarded for investing in its 2 hours and 37 minutes.  This visually striking movie, with its mesmerizing story, is uncommonly good.  Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is now available on DVD.

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