As a founding member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, I will vote for my 11th year in our annual awards. I'm now receiving all kinds of screeners in the mail, and I'm catching up with likely candidates that I missed during the year, or movies that haven't yet shown, or movies that I loved and would like to see again. I'd like for this to be a casual series of random thoughts, rather than actual reviews.Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a nearly three-hour film from Turkey. It comes from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose Climates I admired, and whose Distant I had heard good things about (but have not yet seen). It opened for about a week early in the spring, and I missed it, presumably along with many other moviegoers.
But here's the good news: it's terrific. The "Once Upon a Time" title may remind viewers of epic films by Sergio Leone, with their grand uses of space and memorable uses of violence. The comparison is apt. The first roughly three-fifths of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia concerns the search for a dead body in the rural countryside. It begins late and night -- employing some dramatic lighting using the car headlights -- and the men grow tired as the sky grows brighter. The rest of the movie concerns the procedures involved once the body is found. It winds up with an amazing, moving little touch of life amongst all the death and paperwork.
I think this is a film that will live on well past awards season. Don't let it intimidate you. You'll get sucked in easier than you think. It's already on DVD and Blu-ray and is currently streaming on Netflix (as is Ceylan's earlier film, Distant, which I will try to catch up with soon).
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