Üç maymun - Three Monkeys

Just like the Chinese/Japanese exhortation to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," Three Monkeys (poster, official site) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan offers no clear explanation of the underlying meaning.  Is it just good sense to mind your own business, or is there a danger of ignoring evil and being complicit?  Watching this tense non-thriller, another maxim comes to mind: be careful what you ask for.

Here's what the official site says:

A family dislocated when small failings blow up into extravagant lies battles against the odds to stay together by covering up the truth... In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing “Three Monkeys” invalidate the truth of its existence?

The setting is contemporary Istanbul; the only calendar marker I could spot was a background TV newscast proclaiming the electoral victory of the ruling (moderate) Islamist AKP party.  Politician "Servet," we learn, is on the losing side, or in any case does not win in his circumscription.  But that is perhaps the least of his worries.  He has to deal with the matter of a late-night car accident on a deserted country road.  Enter the "dislocated family" - but I won't tell you any more of the story line.

I missed the writer/director's 2006 film Climates, but Kevin Crust's review in the Los Angeles Times captures the essence of the Ceylan style:

The languid tone of the film is enhanced by the dawdling camera as it captures both serene vistas and the near-microscopic focus on character. Quiet moments are further etched with emotion by a finely tuned sound design in which the sizzle of a cigarette sounds like the menacing hiss of a rattlesnake.

Wide Bosphorus vistas combined with "microscopic focus" on the three main characters, a dominant sepia-gray tone that enhances storm clouds and puts that "finely tuned sound design" into high relief - such are the pleasures of Three Monkeys.  A note on that sound design: the Sunday-morning sneak preview in Brussels by the group "Cinefemme" was the perfect setting for true appreciation of this film.  A pin could have been heard, but none were dropped.  So much the better to "feel" the nighttime sounds of Istanbul: a far-off muezzin calling the faithful to prayer; a street cat and his plaintive meow; approaching rain on a rooftop terrace.

Though I missed Climates, I did see Uzak (Distant) when it was released in Brussels in 2004.  Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films should probably be required viewing for those whose cinematic references for Turkey are mired in Midnight Express (1978).  The country has moved on, and AKP or no, Ceylan shows a complex, sophisticated, and secular society where - I know it from reliable sources - the Istanbul Rotary Club has been open to women members long before clubs in... Belgium.

The 2008 Cannes Film Festival awarded Ceylan's Three Monkeys its Best Director prize.  It is, as Le Monde put it, "du grand cinéma."