The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Crime, drama

DIRECTOR

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

WRITERS

Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ercan Kesal

STARS

Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Firat Tanis

BEFORE

1997 Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s critically acclaimed debut feature The Town is a dreamlike examination of childhood and family.

2008 In Ceylan’s Three Monkeys, a politician offers a family money to cover up a hit-and-run accident.

AFTER

2014 Winter Sleep earns Ceylan the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Police work and all that comes with upholding the law has long been a source of fascination in movies. The police represent order, and for the common good they must endure terrible things on our behalf. Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s brooding, tragic movie Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a tale of cops, doctors, and lawyers as they search through the night for the body of a murder victim. Stripping out the artificial glamour and excitement that define these professions in most movies, the movie presents their work as a punishing journey in an endless night that is filled with frustration, tension, and very little glory. Here, the officials who uphold law and order are heroes not because they always catch the bad guy, but because they give up a part of their humanity so that we don’t have to.

The policemen and lawyers in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia are forced to deal with the horrors they witness while also fulfilling the demands of their respective bureaucracies. Unable to express their true reactions to what they see, they are allowed very little catharsis. Police officer Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) is repeatedly rebuked for his impulsive reactions to setbacks. When a body is found, hog-tied and buried in the ground, Naci is the only one in his team to react to the sight truthfully, and for that he is taken aside and sternly told to behave more professionally.

“Nobody just dies because they said they would.”

Cemal / Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Eschewing cop-show clichés, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia portrays the drudgery of police work with raw, unflinching honesty.

Due process

A similar incident occurs later in the movie when Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) conducts an autopsy and discovers something horrific about the death. Like the police officers, the doctor is not allowed to be affected. All he can do is suppress his feelings, write up his report, and stare through the window at the victim’s family as they walk away—just as he will have to do next time, and the time after that.

The practicalities of due process mean that good men are asked to treat horror in the same way that the monsters they are hunting treat it; they surrender their right to feel, because papers need to be filed and the process needs to be respected.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a thoughtful, original take on some very well-covered ground. It is not interested in presenting the police as unflappable action heroes, or lawyers as righteous crusaders, or doctors as kind and benevolent. Rather, it focuses on the human cost of being required to witness and interact with the worst of humanity. The metaphor of one endless night symbolizes the trajectory of the characters’ own lives: each of them is destined to be worn down by their job until they reach the point of degradation, just like the body they must find to eventually put in the ground. There is no rest, and no end in sight.

Kenan (Firat Tanis, center) is one of two suspects who must travel with the police in order to help them find the murder victim’s body.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in 1959 in Istanbul, Turkey, and studied electrical engineering. His first movie, The Town, gained him instant international acclaim. His third movie, Distant, won a host of awards, and he continued to enjoy critical success with Three Monkeys (2008) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 for Winter Sleep.

1997 The Town

2002 Distant

2011 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2014 Winter Sleep

What else to watch: The Big Heat (1953) ✵ Le Doulos (1962) ✵ In Cold Blood (1967) ✵ A Short Film about Killing (1988) ✵ Insomnia (1997) ✵ Zodiac (2007) ✵ Three Monkeys (2008) ✵ Leviathan (2014)