Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (drama) (2011) (2 hrs 37 mins)

The first thing you need to know about this film is that it’s slow. There are a lot of long takes and passages when nothing much appears to happen. But it’s worth persevering with because there is much to admire in this Turkish drama from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The critics thought so too. It was co-winner of the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

The film is based on the experience of one of the film’s screenwriters. It follows a long night spent by the police looking for a dead body in the Turkish countryside. Three cars transport a group of men (police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, gravediggers, army officers and two murder suspects) from location to location in what seems like a fruitless search for a body that the suspects have confessed to burying. The trouble is they were drunk at the time and can’t remember clearly where the body was left.

The opening scenes are shown in long shot. We hear the characters’ conversation during their car journey but at first we only see the cars from a distance. We don’t even know who is speaking. But then we are inside the car with the characters and they gradually reveal themselves through conversation on a number of subjects, including yoghurt, health problems, work, family and death.

The search seems to be getting nowhere and the leading police officer is growing more and more frustrated. The prosecutor who is in charge of the search decides to go to a village so that they can have a break and eat a meal. The mayor of the village extends hospitality and the chief suspect eventually tells the police where the body can be found. Once the body is found and taken to a hospital for an autopsy, the pace picks up as the film focuses on the uneasy relationship between the doctor and the prosecutor, which leads to a revelation about the prosecutor’s personal life.

The richness of the film lies in the subtle characterisation and the visual details. There are several moving moments: the doctor, exhausted and downcast, looking at photographs of his ex-wife and of himself as a boy, the men captivated by the beauty of the mayor’s daughter as she serves them drinks, the prosecutor’s facial expressions as he slowly moves towards making a confession to the doctor.

The characters spend a lot of the film waiting for things to happen, growing bored and drifting into philosophical musings. The film reminded me of Tarkovsky films such as Stalker and Mirror, while the bleak landscapes put me in mind of Antonioni.  What action there is happens slowly but is beautifully filmed.  The film is maybe half an hour too long but if you have the patience to let the film unfold, you will find it offers much to ponder.

Rating: 8/10