Once Upon a Time in
Anatolia
A Film By Nuri Bile
Ceylan
Turkey
As
the title might suggest, landscape may be the most crucial character in the
dark and elliptical Once Upon a Time in
Anatolia. As the men we follow progress through the night, the clear plains
and trees seem to carry on into the distance without end. These men are lost in a world
where not much exists beyond the trees and the slowly fading sun. Like the
opening shots of Abbas Kiaraostami’s The
Wind Will Carry Us, they are dwarfed among the plains in their small cars,
which become their only source of light as their search continues into the long
night.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the
latest work from Turkish director Nuri Bile Ceylan, best known for his 2006
film Climates. Mr. Ceylan’s latest
feature is both an epic as well as an intimate and minimalist portrayal of
daily life. Shot gorgeously along the Anatolian plains, this occasionally
frustrating work attempts to explore a lot of different themes and ideas, as
well as characters, but through a small prism of access in which we our limited by the realism of how people truly act. But as it slowly
treks toward some sort of conclusion, this police procedural is a unique and
assuredly bold attempt to explore a number of notions about the existence of
human life, or at least something of that matter.
