Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) poster & wallpaper

Cafer Köse, Ercan Kesal, Gürkan Aydin

A family suffers from a major communication breakdown during their struggle to get through their hardships.

Flixster Users

73% liked it

1,594 ratings

Critics

78% liked it

55 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 49 min.

Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Release Date: May 15, 2008

Invite friends to see

Stats: 178 reviews

Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites
report incorrect info

Photos

None yet... Got one?

Your Rating


clear rating
Share on: Facebook Twitter

Flixster Reviews (178)

  • gor41
    July 14, 2009
    gor41
    Not as intense as 'Climates' but still filmed with an exquisite painterly eye. The routine plot is shaken alive by two striking scenes which left me gasping and add a star to the score alone - I won't spoil the surprise by saying any more.
  • columbiatch
    March 16, 2009
    columbiatch
    The arthouse aesthetics and formalism of the film never transcends its overdetermined melodrama narrative. Despite the Antonioni and Tarkovsky influences, the film is rather heavily dependent on plot contrivances. The subplot with the dead son feels tacked on and unconvincing. ...( read more) Also the film is so mired in its grim mood that all the performances no matter how the good the actors are all feels one note. It takes itself so seriously that by the end with all the ominous thunderings it veers into self parody. The digital cinematography is certainly very impressive, though the look is too artificial for my tastes.
  • bort16
    January 11, 2009
    bort16
    How much would you sacrifice for the people around you? How much can you ignore to keep your family together? Exactly what can you forgive? If you pretend something didn't happen for the greater good, does it matter that it happened in the first place? These are some of the ques...( read more)tions that permeate the great Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, Three Monkeys.
    Three Monkey's is a dark and grim affair. The film opens as a man drives his car, nodding off, and hits a pedestrian. The man is a politician, and knowing what this would do to his career with an oncoming election, he phones his longtime driver in the middle of the night and offers him an proposition. Take his place, and the nine month jail sentence in return for a lump sum. He accepts for the sake of his boss. Never mind that his sacrifice is placed somewhat in vain, considering the politician loses the election anyway.
    While in jail, the man's family deals on their own. His son, Ismail, wants to ask the politician for part of the money now so they can buy a car. He can do work with the car, but the work is for shady characters according to his mother. One night he returns home beat up and bleeding. We don't know really know what happened, but we can surmise. He takes the train to visit his father every so often in jail. The mother works in a kitchen and looks to get her son a job that he would never be interested in anyway. She does eventually go to the politician on her son's behalf, it appears, to get an advance. There's a strange tension between the two. He asks her if her husband knows about "this." Does he refer to getting the advance, which the mother tells her son his father would never approve of, or is it something else?
    One day Ismail gets set to take the train to visit his father, and mother is preparing to attend training for work. At the station, Ismail gets sick, and vomits on himself. He returns home to get changed. After a moment he realizes the house is not empty. There's noise coming from the bedroom. He notices cigarettes, and looks through the keyhole in the door. He turns and leaves. His mother is having an affair with the politician we now know, as does he. He waits until he leaves then returns to the house. He confronts his mother, but never admits that he saw them together, just that he knows he was in the house. This is the first in a series of events which are purposely left unspoken. He does return to visit his father, and suspicious, he asks if they have someone new. After a pause, the son replies no. To admit the truth would mean the destruction of the family.
    When the father gets out of jail, he returns home to an emotionally absent wife. We can't really know if she was this way before he left, but it doesn't really matter now. She meets him in a nighty laying on the bed, in a brilliant scene which sees the husband go from loving, to suspicious, to anger, and near misogyny, to desperation. The wife, too, goes through a range of emotions, and at one point seems genuine but for a moment, then falls back into a distant place. Everyone knows what is happening, but no one dares speak it.
    Things spiral more and more into an abyss, until everything has to be at least acknowledged. There are ominous tones throughout Three Monkeys, and they climax in a crucial scene, edited in a particular manner. It involves a meeting between two people in a long take, shot from a distance, that finally cuts to another shot from a distance, but this time from a slightly different angle, and slightly obscured by objects in the foreground. What comes next will require a crucial decision be made by the Father to keep his family together, or maybe there is another way.
    The family had another son who died. We're lead to believe that he drowned from the oft sounds of dripping water, and his appearance in a few surreal scenes involving the son and the father - the boy's body is soaked as he observes his family members lying in bed. These moments have a creepiness, but a sad tenderness. Particularly in one scene as the Father lies in bed, his wife moving in the background. All of a sudden a tiny arm comes up from behind and embraces him. This family must have been a bomb waiting to explode for a long time. They're bleeding pain, but each other is all they have.
    Three Monkey's is about as well a film can be directed. Indeed, Ceylan won the best director prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. The aforementioned scene is just one of many well constructed moments. Ceylan channels Tarkovsky in a few scenes, and his colour palette in particular is reminiscent of Tarkovsky. It's only suitable that a film of such dark subject matter be matched in it's look. Ceylan makes great use of locations, and particularly sounds. After the crucial event in the film, the mother wears a shirt that was certainly chosen for it's pattern, as perhaps a not so subtle accusation. Shots are brilliantly composed to represent the distance felt. That there seems to be only one tender embrace in the film - by the dead son to his father - is profound in retrospect.
    I can't be sure, but I have a feeling that Ceylan drew from somewhere deep inside for this film. It's a film that seems as if it were made by someone who knows all to well how something feels. These kinds of movies are almost never a treat to watch. Luckily Ceylan is a such a good director that things never become unbearable, even when they're at the darkest. It's a dark and painful film, but nevertheless doesn't refuse hold out hope for a better day. They were a whole once. Maybe they can be again.
  • Nutterjr
    September 4, 2009
    Nutterjr
    Ceylan creates moments of mesmerizing visual composition in a film that although it does not seem significant, you grow fond of it. Photography and score are excellent and the actors are very expresssive even when they are not talking.
  • kanokaan
    November 28, 2009
    kanokaan
    The first paragraph will be in English and the second one will be in Turkish.

    The widest movie of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.Because everyone can watch it without getting bored.I love his movies nad i watched all of his movies without getting bored.But i agree his technique is...( read more) not for our time youth (fast food eaters).It is for the people who loves and respects Cinema.the people like this will love this movie as they love all of his movies.But the thing i want to say is:"Three Monkeys" is the most watchable movie of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.Other of him,you have listen and watch carefully to understand what it wants to say.But in this,story is more clear.So it is the least personal movie of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

    Nuri Bilge Ceylan'in filmleri genellikle belli bir kitleye hitab eder.Onu anlayacak ve izleyecek kitleye.Ama bana sorarsaniz bu kitle "Üç Maymun"da biraz daha genisliyor.Yani bu film NBC'nin diger filmlerine göre daha kolay anlasilir,daha pahali ve daha az kisisel bir film.Yani onyargi yasamadan herkese onerebileceginiz bir film yapm?s bu sefer usta.Bunu yapmasini uzun zamandir istiyordum.Bravo!
  • g0y
    November 21, 2009
    g0y
    "Releases 11/24/09" Yes, Netflix, thank you.
  • zembie
    August 14, 2009
    zembie
    Quite interesting at first, but with the little progress the characters make, and the extremely slow pace, it just lost me at some point...
  • annihilator
    July 19, 2009
    annihilator
    Klasik bir Nuri Bilge Ceylan filmi.Asgari imkânlar azami verim.
  • gizemb
    May 1, 2009
    gizemb
    Brilliant directing. Powerful movie.
  • ZlatkoGR
    May 1, 2009
    ZlatkoGR
    I heard many good things about this movie but it fell short of my expectations in the end. Some good potential was hidden in the movie, but the outcome was not what it should be...

View All Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) Reviews

Critic Reviews

July 16, 2009
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

An elegant exercise with four characters trapped by class, guilt and greed. full review

May 22, 2009
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

The pace is deliberate, sometimes slow, but the whirlpool pull of this tragic psychological thriller is irresistible. full review

May 1, 2009
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

With Three Monkeys, Nuri Bilge Ceylan trains his cool, detached sensibility on a ripe and pulpy melodrama that might have originated in a James M. Cain novel. full review

October 18, 2008
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

Ceylan's approach is oblique, emphasizing the after-effects more than the actions, with a lot of frozen, painful moments between the characters. full review

View more Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys)" !

Post A Comment | View All Comments

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

All Rotten Tomatoes content is used under license from Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, and the Tomatometer are the trademarks of Incfusion Corporation, d/b/a Rotten Tomatoes, a subsidiary of IGN Entertainment, Inc.

Official Trailer

View Larger Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) Trailer

Cast

More Like This

This list looks lonely.
Add a suggestion!

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

Üç Maymun (Three ... : Watch Free on TV

Movie Quizzes

Create a Quiz |

All Quizzes

Video Clips

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

Meet Other Fans

Add Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?