More Chekhov than CSI, the movie follows a group of men - a commissar, a prosecutor, a doctor, a few cops, a confessed murderer and his accomplice - through a long night as they travel in rural Anatolia, searching for the location of the victim's buried body.
Introspective and slow-paced, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia plays like an anti-detective story. Details of the case are sketchy, the suspects' recollections fuzzy; the story unfolds placing a much greater emphasis on characters. Both the cinematography and the actors' gaunt, tense faces capture the sense of dream-like tiredness and quiet desperation of people persisting in an exhausting, possibly useless task; a few voice-overs are largely unnecessary.
Men are lonely and brooding; female figures pass by like visions or ghosts; truth proves to be disquieting, both in the main case and in a tale told by the prosecutor which slowly turns into a horrible revelation - significantly, the anecdote is straight out of a short story by Chekhov himself (The Examining Magistrate).
7,5/10
Introspective and slow-paced, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia plays like an anti-detective story. Details of the case are sketchy, the suspects' recollections fuzzy; the story unfolds placing a much greater emphasis on characters. Both the cinematography and the actors' gaunt, tense faces capture the sense of dream-like tiredness and quiet desperation of people persisting in an exhausting, possibly useless task; a few voice-overs are largely unnecessary.
Men are lonely and brooding; female figures pass by like visions or ghosts; truth proves to be disquieting, both in the main case and in a tale told by the prosecutor which slowly turns into a horrible revelation - significantly, the anecdote is straight out of a short story by Chekhov himself (The Examining Magistrate).
7,5/10