Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Sameir Ali Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a 2011 Turkish movie. A beautifully well-made film. A group of Officers including a Prosecutor, Doctor, Police Commissioner, the Suspect, his Brother and other Officers are in search of the dead body. The suspect has already confessed about the murder and he agrees to show the place where he buried the victim. But, it was not as easy as that. The suspect was drinking that night and it was too dark. It made the group to search one location after another. Too tired and frustrated, the go to rest in a place.The movie is slow but, it will take your heart for sure. Each and every character is well made, well described and beautifully portrayed. Actors have done a great job in making it real authentic. As the film ends, every character is close to us. Everyone has their own story. The movie travels in through a story, but, I was stuck up in another story that the film maker has implanted into my mind. It should have been purposeful.Do not miss this amazing movie. A must watch.#KiduMovie

expe67 don't let the 2 hours and 40 minutes worry you.once you get inside this human "fairytale" you will even read the Turkish end credits standing still.this little masterpiece of a movie that uses basically a background story to show the real thing.we spend an hour and more in the outskirts of a little town near a village.the touch of the camera is such that you feel like part of the group there ,you can breath the air and feel the cold and nature's sounds.extreme naturalistic direction that captivates you.all that life is ,is captured in that little story.all the actors are just too real and although you feel close to the characters you also glance in awe with the way this movie honors human life in general.i recommend to get in the car, drive ,and make this journey all the way back to the little town with this good cast.it's an experience.

l_rawjalaurence The echoes of Sergio Leone's classic ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) in the English title of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's epic movie BİR ZAMANLAR ANADOLU'DA (ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA) are deliberate. The bulk of the story takes place in Central Anatolia, some thirty or so kilometers from the capital Ankara. Gökhan Tiryaki's cinematography captures the barrenness of the landscape by day and by night; the scrubland, rugged fauna and flora and harsh, unfeeling terrain suggesting a place that resists human colonization. It is a myth, a state of mind as well as a physical place - as Naci the police officer (Yılmaz Erdoğan) observes at one point, it resembles a "fairytale" that will continue to exist even after all of us have been transformed into dust. Timelessness is its watchword; the only way in which humankind can adjust to it is to accept rather than alter the balance of nature. It can be threatening (especially when the wind whistles through the trees, disrupting the autumn leaves), or it can be accommodating, depending on how we view it.Director Ceylan uses the landscape as the backdrop to a story that appears to follow a logical path and then frustrates us. A group of police officers, together with their suspects (Fırat Tanış, Burhan Yıldız), a doctor (Muhammed Uzuner) and a prosecutor (Taner Birsel) venture into the Anatolian wilds in the hope of discovering the body of a murder victim Yaşar (Erol Eraslan). The suspects are not quite sure of its whereabouts; but when they finally locate the body, it transpires that the police officers' assumptions prove catastrophically wrong.But Ceylan is not really interested in the logic of the murder; what concerns him more is how humankind become so obsessed with the minutiae of their existences that they blind themselves to the power of the landscapes they inhabit. Prosecutor Nusret and doctor Cemal are representatives of two professions dedicated to reasonable explanations of all phenomena, but even they become exasperated at some of the police officers' attention to banal details, such as where the borders between two rural areas have been drawn. All of them are quite literally transfixed by the angelic appearance of the young girl Cemile (Cansu Demirci), who distributes tea among them with such aplomb that it seems as if she has been sent by the deity, rather than by her father the local Mukhtar (or headman) (Ercan Kesal). At this moment Nusret and Cemal realize - perhaps for the first time - that their world is governed by higher, unreasonable powers that transcend the quotidian realities of the law and the medical profession. It is part of their tragedy that they recognize this too late in their lives.The film's ending is truly memorable, as Cemal conducts an autopsy on Yaşar's corpse, and consciously falsifies the evidence. But that issue is not really significant; what matters more is that he is a prisoner, both physical as well as mental, of his profession. He cannot take an innocent pleasure in the beauties of the landscape outside the hospital where he works, but remains bound to the factual realities of his job.As with most Ceylan movies, sound assumes as much importance as vision: the howling of the wolves and the chirping of the crickets reminding us of the presence of a vast natural world outside that of the protagonists; and the truly macabre sound of the corpse being cut up and the blood flowing into a metal bowl, contrasted with the innocent shouts of little children playing in the yard outside Cemal's hospital. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA is a highly subtle movie, not least because of its clever use of names suggesting either some kinship between different characters (Cemal/ Cemile) or, perhaps more negatively, a meaninglessness associated with the practice of naming, especially when associated with the meaning of the Anatolian landscape. Ceylan's film might be long (150 minutes) but it represents a triumphant return to the themes of his earlier work.

AfroPixFlix The film's McGuffin is the search for where a body lies, and the raison dêtre is just…hmm, good question. Oh my, what a pitiful film. There are endemic limitations here that much better films scale handily, so don't be bullied into thinking this must be good art, despite what the critics say. AfroPixFlix had a foreboding feeling when the beautiful cinematography graced the screen during the very first scene. It featured three friends saying jovial but incomprehensible things to each other inside a dingy room. A gorgeous ensuing shot has one character standing outside with a barking dog and ambient traffic noise. These were portents to the strengths and weaknesses of the entire very, very long film right away. Great scenery and cinematography, but abysmal script writing, if there was a script. The thing just plods along to demonstrate that watching paint dry can be scenic if you have the right lighting and paint color, and maybe a stiff shot of milky and potent raki. If you treasure rustic Turkish countryside settings in darkness and dawn, then view this film without sound or subtitles. Perhaps go as far as placing a weather- beaten picture frame around your screen and throwing a Constantinoplean-themed party. Opa! Your guests might enjoy the sights, but the plot? How forgettable, if ever grasped. How introspection leads to isolation and realization of how whole classes of society are repressed? Too obfuscated by director Ceylon here. Rather, his unavoidable fixation is with a plethora self- absorbed Turkish public servants who crowd into cars to investigate a murder that really isn't a mystery at all. The only mystery is why AfroPixFlix wasted 157 minutes of precious life watching this. AfroPixFlix shovels about two kilos of dates and a forkful of dirt on this funereal Turkey.