Featured Audience Ratings

• Anthony L

  
  Mysterious and beautiful. It really is a thing of beauty, every shot looks like an award winning photograph. The premise is simple but things are never quite what they seem, just when you think you can shout 'Stereotype' you'll find quite the opposite is true. I'm… More
  Mysterious and beautiful. It really is a thing of beauty, every shot looks like an award winning photograph. The premise is simple but things are never quite what they seem, just when you think you can shout 'Stereotype' you'll find quite the opposite is true. I'm so glad Nuri Bilge Ceylan is back directing, his film Distant (or Uzak) is one of my favourites and really re-ignited my passion for film. This film deserves all the praise it gets.

• Stella D

  
  to call this a police procedural or crime drama seems wrong but i don't know how else one would describe it in genre terms. it's gorgeous, mysterious and rewards patience

• c0up  

  
  'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia'. Slow burning, but oh-so-absorbing! A most beautiful look at the mundane that is life. Every frame of that first hour and a bit is a painting waiting to be sold. Exquisite composition and cinematography, with many a long take emphasising the… More
  'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia'. Slow burning, but oh-so-absorbing! A most beautiful look at the mundane that is life. Every frame of that first hour and a bit is a painting waiting to be sold. Exquisite composition and cinematography, with many a long take emphasising the beauty of the rolling hills against the slow-moving people and cars. Every take is a patient one. Life isn't quick cuts and dramatic reveals. We're forced [I mean it in the best possible way, but others will say it's in the worst] to experience the banality these men go through. Clearly this is masterful screen-writing and direction, because I was leaning forward, on the edge of my seat the whole way through, while the sighs and fidgeting echoed around me.

• Carlos M

  
  This is an absorbing tale with clever dialogue and a peculiar sense of humor, following a group of characters in a crime investigation as they talk about trivial things. Such a fascinating character study that boasts an impeccable sound design and a spectacular cinematography.

• Alireza M

  
  The movie is divided to two parts.First half absolutely is brilliant,magical and includes some of the greatest cinematic moments in recent years and it's kinda Tarkovsky/Kiarostami's directing styles combination.In second part unfortunately it starts fading and failes to… More
  The movie is divided to two parts.First half absolutely is brilliant,magical and includes some of the greatest cinematic moments in recent years and it's kinda Tarkovsky/Kiarostami's directing styles combination.In second part unfortunately it starts fading and failes to create unique cinematic scenes like the first half however it doesn't lose its structure and master director,Ceylan successes to illustrate what he has in mind.In my opinion in 2011 which was a bad year for movies there were only three films with the potential for becoming a classic.Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,The Tree of Life and A Separation.

• William D

  
  Film critic Molly Haskell famously described 'The Godfather' as "grandly mournful," a beautifully apt description. 'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' is just as mournful but without the grandeur -- and without a story. It beats me why 'Anatolia'… More
  Film critic Molly Haskell famously described 'The Godfather' as "grandly mournful," a beautifully apt description. 'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' is just as mournful but without the grandeur -- and without a story. It beats me why 'Anatolia' took second prize at Cannes last year. But 2011 was a tough year in general for Cannes. Top prize went to "The Tree of Life," which in my view was run-of-the-mill Buddhism tarted up with kaleidoscopic visuals. In my review of 'Tree,' I described it as a bloated over-statement. I'd describe 'Anatolia' as a bloated non-statement. If it can be imagined, 'Anatolia' has even fewer ideas than 'Tree.' And Cannes was all aflutter over these two films? It must have been a very undistinguished group of films in competition last year. 'Anatolia' is a long, slow, boring dirge. Turkish filmmaker Nuri Ceylan, who has a very good reputation among serious cinephiles (but this is the first Ceylan film I have seen), takes a bunch of middle-aged male actors out to the remote, frighteningly barren countryside of Turkey in the middle of the night and follows them around with his camera as they amble about in a sleep-deprived stupor. They are playing policemen on a murder investigation. Why they are conducting an investigation in the middle of the night is never explained. Their caravan of broken-down vehicles pulls up to one barren location after the next, and all the men look around the ground for clues. Most of them are overweight, semi-educated imbeciles -- peasants with a high school diploma. The only one with real intelligence is a doctor, who inexplicably is along for the ride. That doctor becomes the heart of the movie, and gradually he does emerge as a slightly interesting character. But only slightly. He, like all the other characters, has nothing to do, so his character can only be contemplated in the abstract. In the last half-hour of this overly long film (two-and-a-half hours), I started to feel that Ceylan was a true artist. Probably only a minor one, but a true one. He does have something mournful to say about life and about people that is genuinely artistic. I just don't think he captured his artistic viewpoint very effectively here, either in the writing of the script or the directing of the film shoot. The cinematography, art direction, and editing is consistently pedestrian. My hunch is that he consciously chose a flat style -- flat neo-realist style is very popular in high-art cinema these days (see also Iran's "A Separation," which has become such an art-house hit in America and is likely to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film). But I don't think it served Ceylan's purpose at all. I can appreciate that he wanted to portray his characters as mind-numbingly boring and flat. But when the man behind the camera starts to seem mind-numbingly boring and flat, something has gone wrong -- at least for me.

• The Movie W

  
  A bunch of grizzled cops spend the night driving through the Turkish countryside, a couple of murder suspects in tow, as they search for the burial site of their victim. At two and a half hours this will be a challenge for most viewers, it certainly was for this one. A shame as… More
  A bunch of grizzled cops spend the night driving through the Turkish countryside, a couple of murder suspects in tow, as they search for the burial site of their victim. At two and a half hours this will be a challenge for most viewers, it certainly was for this one. A shame as if the final act were shorn this would be a really enjoyable film. The characters are deeply likable and could be the most realistic looking cops ever seen on screen. They all look like men on the verge of heart conditions, walking lumps of sweaty cholesterol. In the opening scene one complains of being served yoghurt instead of kebabs. "Skimmed Yoghurt! You'd be ashamed to write the words!" Birsel and Uzuner are fantastic as a prosecutor and a doctor. Were this a western movie those characters would be treated suspiciously, but in eastern culture educated people are respected not mistrusted. The working class cops have immense respect for these two and hang on their every word as did I. There's some great macabre humour on display, particularly a moment where, dictating a crime scene report, Birsel describes the corpse as resembling Clark Gable. The onlooking cops break down laughing and it's a joyous moment that won't fail to raise a smile. A diversion to a small village sees the local mayor ply them with food while bending the prosecutor's ear with tales of the economic state of his district. His pleas fall on deaf ears as the men are more interested in the food than village politics. When the movie gets off the road in the final act it loses all momentum unfortunately. With someone to reign him in though, Ceylan could be a director to watch, though perhaps better suited to TV where he can let his stories breath.

• Walter M

  
  "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" starts with Cemal(Muhammet Uzuner), a doctor, Naci(Yilmaz Erdogan), a commissar, and Nusret(Taner Birsel), a prosecutor, leading a caravan of eleven officials into the middle of night in the countryside in Turkey. What they would probably like… More
  "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" starts with Cemal(Muhammet Uzuner), a doctor, Naci(Yilmaz Erdogan), a commissar, and Nusret(Taner Birsel), a prosecutor, leading a caravan of eleven officials into the middle of night in the countryside in Turkey. What they would probably like most is to go back to bed or a even a nice cup of tea. Instead they are looking for a body, but Kenan(Firat Tanis), one of the suspects, has no idea where it is since he and his buddy were drunk at the time and everything looks the same in this beautifully filmed landscape. While Nusret is speculating about what happens if he goes back to Ankara empty handed, Naci and Cemal speculate about his prostate. Sure, there are times here when it will seem like you stumbled into a Quentin Tarantino movie by accident, especially with its epic length and deliberate pacing, but there is more going on here than just a bleakly funny shaggy dog joke that goes on just long enough to answer one question and raising a whole bunch of others. The central issue that director Nuri Bilge Ceylan wonders about here is his home country of Turkey's possible place in the European Union and the answer is not exactly positive. Start with a small town and its misplaced priorities in building a first class morgue when it can not even manage its electricity needs successfully on a windy night.(Admittedly, this is a universal problem, as cities here in the United States build sports stadiums they can hardly afford while other much more important needs go by the wayside.) That's not to mention the other deeper problem of emigration and you start to wonder what Turkey's future might look like.

• John B

  
  I see Wesley Morris' review and I love the sentiment - it is like reading a very good book in an uncomfortable chair. There are lots of interesting things in this film. The problem is that they occur over 157 minutes in a long drawn out process. It certainly tests patience.

• Panta O

  
  What a feast for eyes and brain! This Turkish drama, co-written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan is based on the true experience of one of the film's writers, telling the story of a group of men who search for a dead body on the Anatolian steppe. No wonder that last year was a… More
  What a feast for eyes and brain! This Turkish drama, co-written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan is based on the true experience of one of the film's writers, telling the story of a group of men who search for a dead body on the Anatolian steppe. No wonder that last year was a co-winner at the Cannes Film Festival. One of the most immaculately developed screenplays I've ever experienced, starts with a night in which three men drink and talk and moves to a night where three cars carry a small group of men - police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, grave diggers, gendarmerie forces, and two brothers, homicide suspects - around in the rural surroundings of the Anatolian town Keskin, in search of a buried body... I don't want to give away much of the story but in this film you'll have variety of topics so smoothly interwoven (yoghurt, lamb chops, urination, women, disability, death, suicide, hierarchy, bureaucracy, ethics, and their jobs) that you'll feel that you start to know these screen strangers who are slowly becoming a part of your life! Every wonderful shot was almost a story for itself while fitting the bigger picture without any interruption to the tempo of the story telling. What a pleasure was to watch the performances of Muhammet Uzuner as Doctor Cemal, my favourite Yılmaz Erdoğan as Commissar Naci and always popular Taner Birsel as Prosecutor Nusret who together with the director Nuri Bilge Ceylan took us into the middle of the life of a small town and its specific mentality and hierarchy, while solving a crime! The filmmakers were successful in being as realistic as possible not missing to portray the special atmosphere of Anatolia, which leaves strong impressions on everyone who spent some time in that part of the world. I am a huge fan of Anton Chekhov and it was a pleasant surprise to find many quotations from his stories incorporated in the script. If you are getting tired of Hollywood fabrications and you need some injection of reality with a flare try this daring screen art , do not miss this lengthy masterly portrait murder investigation story with so much in it!

• Jeff L

  
  Beautiful, but SUPER boring. Acutely slow and precise, Anatolia is an interesting piece that drinks deeply from the cup of malaise, taking a systematic view of the characters' dispositions. Every shot is meticulously framed and richly composed. While it should certainly be… More
  Beautiful, but SUPER boring. Acutely slow and precise, Anatolia is an interesting piece that drinks deeply from the cup of malaise, taking a systematic view of the characters' dispositions. Every shot is meticulously framed and richly composed. While it should certainly be revered for its artistic deftness, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" surely won't be confused for Law and Order--not the minutest detail is skipped. Therefore, it is often desperately slow, but it does provide patient viewers with consistently thought provoking ideas. Overall, I would not consider it a necessarily important film, but not a waste of time either; perhaps just a work to be admired.

• Nicolas K

  
  For those that can sit through a 157 minute film of slow pace they will be greatly rewarded with impressive cinematography across some stunning landscapes, superb actors, and a profound, understated script. A subtle allegory from an accomplished filmmaker well worthy of his Cannes… More
  For those that can sit through a 157 minute film of slow pace they will be greatly rewarded with impressive cinematography across some stunning landscapes, superb actors, and a profound, understated script. A subtle allegory from an accomplished filmmaker well worthy of his Cannes award for Best Director.

• Hassan V

  
  I am struggling to define this film as a genre; if I had to say it is a police procedural drama, but like one you would have never seen before. It is made with a neo-realist eye for it's characters and the eye of a skilled landscape painter for it's atmosphere. I have read… More
  I am struggling to define this film as a genre; if I had to say it is a police procedural drama, but like one you would have never seen before. It is made with a neo-realist eye for it's characters and the eye of a skilled landscape painter for it's atmosphere. I have read critics saying that the second half fades, but I thought it was a moment for contemplation for both the characters and audience of what occurred in the first hour and forty. I was really rattled by this film and want to watch it again pretty damn soon.

• Stephen E

  
  If there ever was a film that could succeed solely because of its cinematography, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" would be that film. Each shot is beautiful, each image haunting, but outside of this near visual perfection, it's a tedious experience. You can feel each… More
  If there ever was a film that could succeed solely because of its cinematography, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" would be that film. Each shot is beautiful, each image haunting, but outside of this near visual perfection, it's a tedious experience. You can feel each minute slowly pass, and unfortunately, there are 157 of them. The performances all seem in tune and I don't doubt the director's talent, but "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" isn't involving or relatively interesting.

• Daisy M

  
  it took me 3 days to finish this Turkish masterpiece Once upon a time in Anatolia. If you are familiar with Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan works, then you know what to expect. Here he impressed me, same as Three Monkeys and Distance, with its unique structure, still camera,… More
  it took me 3 days to finish this Turkish masterpiece Once upon a time in Anatolia. If you are familiar with Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan works, then you know what to expect. Here he impressed me, same as Three Monkeys and Distance, with its unique structure, still camera, minimal dialogues and beautiful cinematography.The story was told in a very slow pace.It was about nine men,which included the two men accused of the murder, who confessed and would show them where they buried the body, the police chief, prosecutor, doctor, diggers, and guards.Everyone of them performed their characters in a clever way. The movie was brilliant, from the very first scene to the amazing landscape in the dead of the night to the focus on one single character, especially the doctor, the cinematography was a work of art.Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was surely another cinematic gem from the Turkish master Ceylan. I Highly recommended this for real film watchers who do not have to have action packed scenes to enjoy a film.

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