Once Upon a Time in Anatolia [DVD]

The reviews quoted on the sleeve of this DVD give a totally misleading impression of the nature of the film. "A thriller as challenging as Antonioni's Blow-up..." says The Observer; "Murder mysteries rarely run so deep" says Time Out.
This is NOT a thriller and it is NOT a murder mystery, and I'm concerned that people might end up disliking it simply because it's not what they were led to expect. Even The Guardian's description of the film as "stunning" and "exhilarating" is a bit deceptive, because this is much more slow-burning than those words suggest.
There's not much plot, not much action, not much suspense and not much mystery, but the absence of these ingredients clears the way for a constant stream of understated visual poetry, a warm glow of human sympathy, a recurrent vein of unforced humour and a quiet, humble dignity that would not otherwise make themselves heard. The pleasure is in the journey, not in the destination.

The storyline could be something taken from a Coen brothers film and at times this does have a sprinkling of the same wit and the same obscure, existential intentions- particularly of the more recent work. However, there is little that seems worthy of comparison with what this film manages to achieve, with the sometimes stark, sometimes magical beauty of its photography.

The film is shot for the most part at night and so the locations within which they attempt to track down the victim's corpse are steeped in an other worldliness, not really belonging to places we might immediately recognise and yet still full of the minutiae of human drama- the death of a friend's wife, buffalo cheese (or is it yoghurt?), a child's medication- all unfolding around the incidence of a brutal murder, the motive of which is never fully explained.

The final shot- which I will not describe for fear of lessening its effect- is simply haunting and I get goose-bumps thinking of it even now.

Most murder mysteries take you on a journey to find the criminal, this one introduces the murderers within the first few minutes and then sets off to find the victim. The killers, who appear to have murdered their victim in a drunken stupor, can't remember where they've left the body and so a fractious band of men, including the police chief, a doctor, soldiers and local prosecutor, spend all night searching the deserted countryside by the light of their headlamps trying to locate it. The story, such as it is, is only a ruse to spend time with these men - and it's very much about men as barely a female voice is heard throughout the movie. As these men bicker and talk, mostly about banalities, they slowly reveal themselves, all their petty rivalries and hierarchies, their frustrations and occasionally their moral indignation at the events they're immersed in.

On paper, it sounds like the perfect arthouse-snob's movie - it's Turkish, it's over two and a half hours long, nothing really happens, people talk a lot, the central crime isn't really what it's about and it even had the temerity to win at Cannes - but don't let any of that put you off. On screen, it's luminous with moments of jaw-dropping cinematography, much of it shot at dusk when they must have had minutes to catch a shot before the light went, and there are some setups that must have taken forever to get right - just how many apples did they roll down that hill?

Slight spoiler alert! The last line of dialogue comes some minutes before the end and, like much of the movie before it, is somehow banal and profound at the same time. The minutes that follow contain no dialogue but are far from silent - we hear the sounds of childhood and of death, while onscreen we watch a middle-aged man reluctantly cross a one-way divide somewhere between the two. It's certainly not for everybody, but for those with the patience it's one of those slow-burn movies that's still smouldering in your mind days after you see it. Highly recommended.