Érase una vez en Anatolia

A través de sus personajes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan toca temas importantes de su sociedad: la desigualdad de sexos, la frialdad de la administración, el peso de una tradición obsoleta con respecto a las costumbres, la resistencia al cambio vivido como un acto de colonización. La investigación es densa y oscura, pero la impaciencia de los alumnos que somos se ve felizmente compensada y recompensada por la amplitud magistral de una verdadera lección de cine.

Lengthy, rigorous and masterly portrait of a night and day in the life of a murder investigation on his country’s Anatolian steppes. (...) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is also unusually wordy and Ceylan plays with borders in language between the useless and useful, the banal and significant. It’s a mysterious and demanding work, and it marks a distinct progression in Ceylan’s career as he continues to gnaw at the boundaries of film storytelling with humour, grace, empathy and a dry, wry view of everyday life.

A long, slow haul but for the willing, a haunting journey into the heart of darkness in Turkish Anatolia. (...) Clearly this is festival material of a very high level, whose audience will be difficult to conjure up beyond the cognoscenti and patrons of black tie film events. At the same time, for those willing to take the plunge, it is a deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory.

Plays like “Zodiac” meets “Police, Adjective.” That’s a tough combination to pull off: Neither David Fincher’s epic tale of the infamous decade-spanning serial killer hunt nor Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu’s minimalist cop drama come with easy answers. But Ceylan has made a similarly analytical brain teaser, rendered in patient and sharply philosophical terms.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's somber, rigorous new feature is a meditative procedural that expands what would normally consume the first five minutes of a "Law & Order" episode into a slow-moving, nearly three-hour portrait of men at work, taking stock of the enormous social and moral burdens they bear. Beautifully crafted, ultra-rarefied pic won't expand the audience for the Turkish auteur's work, though festgoers will again appreciate Ceylan's marvelous eye and surprising reserves of humor.