Once Upon a Lost Time in Turkey
Review: Once Upon A Time in Anatolia
In a film that takes place in the context of a single night and morning, Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan explores Turkey’s darker past
Acclaimed Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan recently said, “I like to create to mislead people.” Everything about his extraordinary, Palme d’Or-winning film Once Upon A Time in Anatolia seems designed to send its audience in the wrong direction.
The film begins with a party, as three jolly men drink in a roadside mechanic shop. Then the mood abruptly changes to a kind of bleak, CSI-type recast with quarrelsome Turkish men. The story follows four policemen, a prosecutor (the Turkish equivalent of a District Attorney), a coroner, and a pair of military gendarmes through the night on their search for the grave of one of the men. The drinking party evidently turned murderous, but why? One cop observes that unexplained crimes always revolve around women.
More:Once Upon a Lost Time in Turkey | The Majalla Magazine