Review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) by Irvin C — 31 Oct 2011

Offers up the funniest crime scenes since the South Korean entry "Memories of Murder" - locations where the ultimate jurisdiction is a four-in-the-morning absurdity. Everyone gets their socks wet in streams; names keep getting mispronounced.

Having exhausted their biscuit supplies, the cops are reduced to shaking trees in the hope something will come out - and the grace note that results suggests, as with the macadamia-nut sequence in "Climates", a previous, tantalising glimpse of this director's sense of humour, that Ceylan is a filmmaker unusually preoccupied with the way things roll, however long it takes, wherever it takes us.

.. This is a work that leaves you feeling as though you, too, have been up all night, witnessing at first-hand something of the human condition, what it is to be mortal and alone, or at the mercy of others.

At first glance, the concluding 45 minutes (with its all-too-literal, squelchy off-screen autopsy) are maybe not quite as revelatory as what's gone before, but that's as much due to the exceptionally high standards Ceylan has achieved and maintained elsewhere: here, even the mid-film drinks break - wherein the party stop off at a chief's camp, and his gorgeous daughter brings these men light and succour - is mysterious, profound and the very essence of cinema.