A Brilliant Conflict

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This film is first of all very beautiful in sceneries and cinematography, the latter by Gokhan Tiryaki. It's an existential film that uses the searching for a corpse, which will last one night, to tell a universal story about the misery of men in their lives and societies, and the dirt behind their small poor lives. That contasts with the beauty and immensity of landscape that's behind what's happening. The characters are masterfully described, also thanks to the beautiful closeups (and the very good actors, of course). This misery of the human events seems to contrast also with the women of the film, who are only two (it seems really a film of men) and who appear to be deeply dignified, innocent and angelic (same for the child).

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is an extraordinary director who uses the color spectrum and composes the scenes with emotions and feelings. I pretty much liked the movie. I watched it during a chilly night, and I can say that it felt like it was really happening. Especially the Mukhtar scene is fantastic, the mosaic of the actors, the use of light are really really fantastic.

I came across this movie after a lot of research and spending a lot of time. When i read the reviews, the expectations were high. The movie started very well and built up a lot of expectations on what will unfold.Lot of time had passed and we were still on character building. The movie shows great attention to details on every scene for every character other than the accused I felt. Great cinematography and acting and thats it. I was hoping for a twist or something to happen next as it was thriller genre movie. The movie then just ends leaving everything open ended.

I have had this movie sitting on a hard drive for quite a while. After reading a gushing Guardian review some time ago I acquired it and put it aside for a future watch.I sat down to give it a go last night, and was tremendously disappointed. The pacing of the film is painfully slow, and you are forced to sit through extended scenes of cars driving... slowly....driving... slowly along dark roads.There is a bit of atmosphere to the film, but given how low key everything is the picture has to be saved by the characters, the dialogue or the story. In a bland film such as this, the dialogue must be razor sharp, the characters must be mesmeric, or the plot has to be intriguing. Sadly, at least in the first forty minutes, there is nothing of note in the dialogue. The odd moment raises a chuckle, but it is nowhere near enough to hold your interest. Its just ambling along, seemingly going nowhere and its very hard to stay engaged.Admittedly I was quite tired when watching this film, but absolutely nothing about it stirred me from my daze, it was just uniformly uneventful and nothing else made up for this. I gave it roughly forty minutes and my girlfriend and I agreed we had both seen enough.A disappointing 4/10.