Review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) by Panta O — 29 Apr 2012

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!