Star Rating:

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Actors: Muhammet Uzuner, Taner Birsel, Yilmaz Erdogan

Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001

Genre(s): Drama

Running time: 150 minutes

Those who enjoyed Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys and Climates will wallow in the director's distinctive understated style. While those movies kept the running time from low to medium, patience is pushed here with a bum-numbing two-and-a-half hour stretch. Big on ideas it might, but Once Upon A Time In Anatolia just doesn't have enough going on to warrant its time.

Two cars and an army jeep trawl through the Turkish countryside of Anatolia in the middle of the night. They are on a gruesome mission, escorting murder suspect Kenen (Tenis) to a secluded spot where he has buried his victim in a shallow grave. Just off the smokes, police chief Nacis (Erdogan) is running out of patience with Kenen's lack of whereabouts, while doctor Cemal (Uzuner) and prosecutor Nusret's (Birsel) attempt to keep his fiery temper at bay...

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is a departure of sorts for Ceylan. Amongst the talk of death and murder, the writer-director injects moments of humour. The aforementioned discussion on what makes a quality yoghurt, Birsel's similarity to Clark Gable and how to fit a dead body into the boot of a car bring lighten the heavy load. A departure, yes, but in other ways it's as you were. Like Climates and Three Monkeys, the subject matter is tackled so indirectly it needs another viewing to figure out what Ceylan is trying to say and one begins to suspect that the director only uses story as a launchpad to bigger things.

In the director's typical style, some scenes go on forever. Frustratingly so. There really is no need for the prosecutor's graveside procedural address to go on for as long as it does, but maybe it's in these lengthy monologues, when a man's body is carelessly laid on the ground, that Ceylan is casting a spotlight on a cold, unfeeling universe and man's inhumanity to man. Maybe not. Yes, this needs another viewing. The grave search is a McGuffin for the philosophical discussions that dot the night. Conversations veer from yoghurt to the condition of prostates to the cause of death of a woman who predicted her passing five months on and apparently dropped dead on that very date.

Despite a skill of planting the viewer into these cars and experiencing the night with the characters, repetition soon sets in, however. A shame because Uzuner, Erdogan and Birsel deliver note-perfect lived-in performances.