Through the night, three cars carry a small group of men around in the rural surroundings of the Anatolian town Keskin, in search of a buried body. The group involves police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, two grave diggers, army forces, and two brothers, both homicide suspects. The darkness and the seemingly visual indistinctness of the barren landscape do not help, each spot looks the same.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is an uncompromising film, seemingly possessed by some mysterious grandeur in its wintry, bleak and pitch black pessimism. We as an audience are brought along on this sleepless journey in what seems to be just as tiresome as the characters must have felt. We too feel the frustration of the expedition, with every search giving no results. This premise is a genius move from Ceylan, and he has said in interviews that he made the first half as tiresome as he could possibly manage, and if that resulted in people standing up and leaving the cinema, well, then was only a sign of artistic success.
“Never have I ever met someone as pessimistic as you, Doctor”, the Prosecutor says, hinting to the fact that the Doctor believes the young woman the Prosecutor mentioned earlier on may have committed suicide.
The whole film is drenched in this bleak, pessimistic nature, and we come to learn that the main characters – through their view on topics such as family, spouses, ex-wives, death, suicide, hierarchy, bureaucracy, ethics, and their jobs – are all rotten apples with their own set of secrets and demons, no matter their working title. We more or less come to learn that everything and everyone is a cover-up.
In one encapsulating scene of the film theme we see a police officer picking the fruits of an apple tree, and clumsy as he is, he drops a few of them on the ground. What makes this scene so great is what follows. The camera chooses to leave the Prosecutor and the Chief of police in the middle of a debate, and following an apple, rolling down the steps and into a river. From there it floats all the way down until it stops, resting along with three rotten apples, all having followed the same route before… No matter if you’re a cop or a suspected murderer. We’re all bad apples, and we tend to land far from the tree.
I don’t know if this is a good word to describe this film, but the word “literate” comes to mind. In many ways Ceylan’s film is like a good novel, with deep and carefully drawn out characters and setting, and with a complex story, where the truth seem to be buried under ground as well, hidden in the dark, indistinct landscapes. Ceylan effectively combines the literate quality of the script with some masterful cinematography, mostly done with natural lighting (the light from the cars). The visuals give the film something of an ethereal quality, which works extremely well for the journey aspect of the narrative. Basically, this is one of those films that’s so moody we tend to call them experiences rather than movies. I can’t recall having seen anything like this before.
In the end you come out of the film feeling fatigued, but also that your intelligence and sharp senses have been challenged. You know that a meaningful, mysterious slice of life just has been presented to you, but you’ll have to figure out what it all means on your own.
*ddileo 