by Allan Fish
(Turkey 2011 150m) DVD1/2
Aka. Bir zamanlar Anadolu’da
Darkness and cold with enfold my weary soul
p Zeynep Ozbatur d Nuri Bilge Ceylan w Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ercan Cesal, Ebru Ceylan ph Gokhan Tiryaki ed art Cagri Erdogan
Muhammet Uzuner (Dr Cemal), Taner Birsel (Prosecutor Nusret), Yilmaz Erdogan (Commissar Naci), Ahmet Mumtaz Teylan (Arab Ali), Firat Tanis (Kenan), Ercan Kesal (Mayor Mukhtar), Erol Erarslan (Yasir), Ugur Asnaloglu (Tevfik), Murat Kilic (Izzet), Nihan Okutucu (Gulnaz), Safak Karali (Abidin), Cansu Demirci (Mukhtar’s daughter),
It had been nearly a decade since Uzak, the film that not only promoted its director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as a talent to follow but arguably put modern Turkish cinema on the map. Since then other directors have loomed into focus – Fatih Akin, Semih Kaplanoglu, Oscan Alper, to name but a trio – and now, along with perhaps Romania, it’s become the breakthrough national cinema of the 21st century. Ceylan himself had made films in the interim, but while Climates had some wonderful narrative touches and Three Monkeys was a pleasant enough appetiser, one could hardly call them veritable feasts worthy of the next Tarkovsky, as he has often been seen. Being honest, other directors perhaps now seem closer to Tarkovsky’s ideologies, but one thing Ceylan has always had is an eye for visuals and, in particular, very deliberate and exact camera placement.
Anatolia is essentially a two act piece. The first details the search for a body in the Turkish steppes, beginning at dusk and continuing long into the night when the suspect can’t seem to pinpoint the burial location. Along for the ride, along with the police chief, are the public prosecutor, the police doctor and an army representative. When tempers start to fray, the prosecutor suggests they call a halt to proceedings for the night and they go for shelter at a local village, where they are put up by the local mayor. He wastes no opportunity in trying to get the prosecutor to agree to help push for funding for a new morgue in the village and to replace a broken cemetery wall. And if the first act takes place entirely under the cover of night, the second picks up the action the following morning, when the body is found almost instantly and is taken back to HQ for the necessary medical examinations.
The comparison to Romanian cinema is well-founded as the films of both countries share a common visual palette, almost documentarist techniques and a sense of the absurdity of bureaucracy. Think of the form-filling jobsworths who ship around the unfortunate Mr Lazarescu in Cristi Piui’s attack on medical services or the officiousness of the cops in Parumboiu’s Police Adjective. Here the interest lies partly in jurisdiction, so the army officer asks whether he takes orders from the police chief or the prosecutor, the doctor tries to carry out according to procedure and the prosecutor is forced to take a look at his own personal outlook. A previous case which he’d put down to fate suddenly comes back into focus when the doctor makes him realise it may not just have been a medical ‘act of God’. Then the doctor himself is forced to take action that seems more expedient than correct during the climactic autopsy.
What will frustrate many about Anatolia is its sense of ambiguity. No sides are taken, for right or wrong, by the book or maverick. Expectations are turned on their head, right from that extreme long stationary crane shot in which three vehicles make their way across a hillside at dusk, their headlights blurred as if to seem like the tails of fiery comets. Illuminated only by those yellow headlights, the first half seems bathed in a golden glow, but it’s a flow that lights up faces in a very revealing way, so that when the mayor’s young daughter offers a drink to the visitors, it’s as if an angel has come down to them from above. And a word for the performances, each completely spontaneous, with special mention to Birsel’s prosecutor, looking like a moustachioed David Strathairn deprived of sleep. If it isn’t a masterpiece, it sticks with you long after the credits roll, so vividly one might tell the story to people years from now and it may seem like a fairytale.
That’s an interesting connection with Romania that you point out, a critical view, if not outright spoofing of the official bureaucracy. Maybe things are going in the right direction in the Black Sea. 🙂
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was a very weird experience for me. I was feeling taxed, lost, and almost uninterested half the way through, and could only collect striking images and a very sense-heavy presentation. But then, slowly, I started thinking to myself “god damn ….. GOD DAMN”, and by the end I wanted to get my hands on more of Ceylan’s work. “The New Tarkovsky” makes me think of “The Next One” whenever the NHL draft nears and teams look for the next Gretzky, but I think Ceylan has left me impressed regardless.
Tarkovsky was certainly on my mind when I watched Once Upon A Time In Anatolia. It gave off the same vibe as Stalker for me and I appreciated the internal similarities. Police, Adjective and Mr Lazarescu also bear a certain kinship as well. As I mentioned in my 2011 countdown, I found Anatolia to be the second best film of last year and I still maintain that position. Very subtle denouements occur near the end of the film that sheds light on a couple of characters as well as Ceylan’s overall theme. I guess patience is required to appreciate some of what the filmmaker is getting at. I found the conclusion to be a sort of understated tragedy in silence. No resolution is firmly arrived at in any typical or standard way, but that is certainly the larger point to an extent. Only seen it once at The Film Forum and eagerly await the release in late June to purchase a copy.
I found much to ponder in Three Monkeys (and I’ve been enjoying this new wave of Turkish cinema – especially Fatih Akin’s works but also the films Times & Winds, When We Leave and Bal), but I haven’t seen any of Ceylan’s other works. This one is in my Netflix queue, of course, but what would you recommend as his “essentials”?
This and Uzak, David.
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