Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

LOVEFiLM Review Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

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  By Tom Charity from LOVEFiLM

  The Grand Jury Prize-winner at Cannes last year, Nuri Bilge Ceylan film is crafted with extraordinary care.

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Most helpful review Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

• Like an apple rolling down a languid stream

   

  By LeonHarper (61 reviews) from At the movies , 16 Jul 2012

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  This film is a dark meditative beauty where photography alone makes the whole experience worthwhile. Light is revered by director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as it bathes the lugubrious atmosphere coming from unsuspected sources such as neon bar signs or car beams. A simple lantern brings a whole new world of poetic meaning.
  
  Ceylan sets the bar high with this gem at so many other levels. The film drifts along the raw steppes of Anatolia following a peculiar entourage searching for the corpse of an alleged murder. A prosecutor, a doctor, two suspects and a procession of policemen and troops search for the missing body while Ceylan lets the story flow at its unique pace, the pace of an unhurried life, letting us soak in this soporiferous rhythm while following, floating along this midnight caravan. The search for the body and other clues is a linear path from where Ceylan observes life, with death as a companion.
  
  The silent camera has an eye for beauty capturing the majesty in the landscape and crafting precise human compositions from a time that ranges from dusk to dawn. Ceylan is deliberately mysterious as he sets his focus on nothing and nobody. He lets the march follow its parsimonious pace, revealing the secrets of the search and the answers to the questions with its own unique, quiet, moody, melancholic cadence, like an apple rolling down a languid stream. The voice of the film reflects on the banal dialogues, the intimate thoughts, the inner doubts and the ultimate questions of the occupants of this cortege while shifting the spotlight from one character to the other with apparent lack of purpose.
  
  The cast is exceptionally credible and conveys both the realism of the forensic search and the poetry of the soul searching. The long night seems to gravitate down onto them like a heavy stone while they submerge in it with a sense of quiet acceptance. When the fatigue sinks in, souls crack, doubts spring up to the surface and humans seem a little bit more overwhelmed by their emotions and the sense of the inevitability of life, that raw life that seems to be reflected upon the landscape of Anatolia.

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