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Friday, February 10, 2012
MOVIE REVIEW
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar
Anadolu'da)
The Doctor Will See You Now
Muhammet Uzuner as Dr. Cemal in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's psychological police drama
"Once Upon A Time In Anatolia".
NBC Film/Cinema Guild
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Friday,
February 10,
2012
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's outstanding and astonishing psychological drama is a
rumination on police and criminal procedure and the steps that break protocol,
becoming anomaly instead of ritual. From Turkey, Mr. Ceylan's "Once Upon A
Time In Anatolia" has a quiet, unyielding power that grows and penetrates.
(The film has been playing in select U.S. cities, and begins today in San
Francisco.) At the start we see a blurry image which slowly focuses into a
window through which a trio of men sit in the distance. One of these men
will eventually turn up dead.
In Anatolia, a rural Turkish town, there's Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan), a hot-headed
police chief with a sense of moral outrage, who continuously slurs a colleague.
He complains about the police "suits" who get all the glory and commendation
after grunts and lifers like himself do the dirty work of finding the dead
bodies. A police doctor (Muhammet Uzuner) and a seasoned prosecutor (Taner
Birsel) accompany the suspects in the murder to the crime scene, which isn't
easily found. Throughout there is endless philosophizing, conjecture and
riddle-like phrases, all of which aren't uttered idly even if the backdrop
itself is idle.
This epic film moves very gradually and deliberately. Shot in many
extended takes and unbroken shots, the camera lingers in an expansive landscape
and often on police officials in the extreme background as they banter about
this and that. Sometimes the camera is up close, creeping up on the back
of someone's head, generating prolonged suspense. One silent
Jesus-like-looking murder suspect Kenan (Firat Tanis) has a face often
photographed in darkness, a man who looks as if he knows he will be crucified.
The film's spiritual aestetic is as sincere as its haloed visions. The
slings and arrows of sacrifice are quietly suffered by some, while the awful
truth is borne by others.
"Once Upon A Time In Anatolia", which takes place over one long night and one
day, is a meditation, and its beautiful, stark visions lull and disorient.
Mr. Ceylan doesn't ask us to solve the murder. Early on we have strong
suspicions about who is culpable. The film's spice is the excitement and
tension of how the culprit will be revealed, and to whom. "Anatolia" is a
shrewd exercise in slow-burn, methodical and deductive maneuvering. Most
of all the film is about dedicated individuals and their rigorous approach to
work.
Mr. Ceylan's drama is a smartly-crafted treatise on the pronouncement of
procedure. When Nusret, the amiable prosecutor who looks like Clark Gable,
dictates crime scene details or autopsy circumstances it's as if he's reading an
obituary out loud. There's relief and ceremonial reverence in this kind of
act: the "closing the book" on a crime, of putting the demons and the evils of
its rendering to bed, at least momentarily.
By contrast the police doctor Cemal has a quieter, more embracing and empathetic
side. He's more or less hardened to the results of crimes and has many a
theory. Cemal and the prosecutor have a thrilling test-of-wills exchange
in the film's climax that presents an ambiguous take on who pulls the strings of
procedure. "Anatolia" is as much about who controls the way a crime is
handled and who writes the final epitaph on it as it is about burned-out men who
pine for their wives. Some know better than to mix the two; others have
long since forgotten.
If Michael Mann's police and criminals are flashy, serious and self-involved
beings, the police of Mr. Ceylan's stage are weary down-to-earth types jaded by
life, lies and the reality that any degree of fumbling on a case will cause huge
consternation. Filled with metaphor, irony and foreshadowing as well as
excellent writing and superb camerawork, "Anatolia" revels in its shadowy,
silhouetted figures, tainted by both similar and different brushes of life,
accident and design. If you stay in the crime-solving game long enough you
become as dirty as the ne'er do-wells you tangle with and arrest. The soul
gets corrupted, as do the motives for doing what one does. "Anatolia" is a
crime drama that allows you to think as a detective does while entertaining the
designs of a criminal.
Each of the police officials play the metaphorical role of crime-solver and
criminal, piecing together the events and motives behind the killing of a man
while offering up confessionals about their own lives, projecting a sense of
their own moral failings, if not outright guilt, onto the victim. Dry,
sweaty and murky, "Anatolia" provides little humor but is riveting throughout
its almost three-hour running time. Tangible theories are discussed,
presented and dismissed where logic doesn't fit. Probability and doubt
linger. Perception, process and rumor follow. We know that in
"Anatolia" the most savvy crime-solvers intuit that something isn't right.
The question is, will strict adherence to procedure reinforce the notion that
crime doesn't pay?
With: Ahmet Mümtaz Teylan, Ercan Kesal, Erol Eraslan, Burhan Yildiz, Murat Kiliç,
Nihan Okutucu.
"Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" is not rated by the Motion Picture Association Of America.
It contains unsettling descriptions of autopsy, including sounds of an autopsy
in process. The film is in the Turkish language with English subtitles. The
film's running time is two hours and 41 minutes.
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