It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I am not the best reviewer nor the best English speaker but pleas hear my words. I think Nuri Bilge Ceylan is awesome, I actually liked his last two movies. After watching Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep and seeing this movie on YMS's (a movie reviewer, you-tuber) list i gave it a shot.I felt like even the Turkish TV shows could tell this story faster. (They took 2 hours per episode and at least 2 season) This movie feels like a photography slayt, most of time nothing happens on those great shoots. Characters and story itself wasn't interesting at all. I love those depressed, static scenes but it was exaggerated in this movie and it didn't gave the results like Chan-wook Park's movies does. I am sure a lot of people quoted this before but "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." -A.H, Which in this movie there were only dull bits.There wasn't enough characters nor events, the ones we got were very undeveloped and uninteresting. You may think because the writer wanted to make it 'a cut from real life' but he didn't stick with that either. The ending was awfully cringe-worthy, i am not going to give spoilers because this should be read before watching that disaster. But if you watch it you'll see that characters can not be placed in to anywhere. They are acting randomly e.g. "I am a very nice person but i am going to be very rude in just this scene for NO reason." At least his next movies were having more interesting stories but still pretty boring. Maybe he can start taking some risks at some point. Because Turkish cinema is awful and this guy is like a treasure to us.

The three monkeys in the title of this film refer to both the classic "See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil" maxim and to the compact family of three depicted in the film. These three characters are Eyup, his wife Hacer, and their son Ismail. Each of these people seem to live by the maxim of the monkeys so much that they hardly talk to each other at all. Events unfold with a tragic inevitability after Eyup agrees to confess to a crime committed by his boss Servet to shield him from political disgrace in exchange for a large payoff. The shattered family then attempts to go on about their lives as if nothing had ever happened, even when more things do happen. Problems that normally would be relatively routine when faced by a united family thus become a devastating cycle that threatens to destroy their lives.The material here is good but it likely would have devolved into histrionic melodrama in the hands of a less restrained director. Ceylan is a minimalist and as such he tends to allow the actions of the character to speak for themselves. In a way the lack of exposition puts the viewer in a similar situation to that of the family; we don't know exactly what they are thinking either.Ceylan's greatest strength is in visuals: his landscapes look unlike anyone else's. The colors are often desaturated; I generally think this visual technique is a mistake but it looks great in his films. Like all Ceylan films, Three Monkeys is worth seeing for the indescribable visuals alone, but this film in particular also offers a perfectly executed family tragedy. Ceylan really outdid himself this time, this is one of the best films of the decade.

Üç maymun (2008), directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is a Turkish film shown in the United States with the title, "Three Monkeys." The film explores the dynamics of a working-class family when these dynamics are changed by the actions of an upper-class employer.Yavuz Bingol plays Eyüp, who is a chauffeur for a wealthy businessman/politician. His wife, Hacer--played by the lovely Hatice Aslan--and his son, Ismail (Rifat Sungar) are the other two family members. Although many reviewers have called the family dysfunctional, I think that, at the outset of the film, they aren't much different from other families. We all know of families with two hard-working parents and a young-adult son who lives at home. The son is drifting towards trouble, but hasn't actually gotten there yet. The scenario isn't all that unusual.At the very outset of the film, the chauffeur's employer has killed a pedestrian, and then left the scene of the accident. That sets the plot in motion--everything follows from that event.This is a somber, thoughtful film. There's very little on-screen violence and almost no gaiety either. Ceylan reminds me of Chantal Ackerman in his use of long, middle-distance takes. If someone is going somewhere, we get long scenes in which we see the person walking, then riding on a train, then walking again. The scenes aren't random. At that point in the plot, the person must move from point A to point B. Most directors would show him or her leaving a house, and arriving at an office, or vice-versa. Ceylan shows us the character actually traveling from A to B. Once I got into the rhythm of the film, I enjoyed this slow and careful directorial style. Whether or not you like the film may hinge on your acceptance or rejection of Ceylan's technique.We saw this film in the wonderful Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. I think it would work almost as well on DVD.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan shows us how an awful screenplay turns to a good movie in a professional director's hand. I think he deserved all those award because of that reason.Overall acting was good. Especially those two Yavuz Bingol and Ercan Kesal who are not actors in real (Bingl is a musician and Kesal is a doctor) were remarkable.By the way, to put a dead child in a movie to support the physiological atmosphere and subject of the movie was a good idea. But still I did not like the form of the child as he was too scary to be a part the movie. So, 0 for the screenplay, 6 for performers and 8 for the director.