Highly Overrated But Still Good

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

An epic, great film, one of the masterpieces of cinema of all times. The acting is absolutely fantastic, the actors actually take a grip of the viewer and one cannot but be bewitched by them. The setting in Anatolia and shots are great, contrasting greatly with Western cinema so full of clichés and stereotypes about relationships. Each scene is like a painting, a painting which breathes of life, simplicity, and complexity at the same time. The story is to be understood on multiple levels, yet there are great questions to be answered probably only after the film has finished, it contains probably some of the great themes of humanity, all surrounded by the great enigma we call 'life'. A great film for all times.

A dark, non-pithy version of Polanski's Carnage, this character study focuses on a wealthy, aging intellectual (Haluk Bilginer), who owns an isolated hotel where he lives with his young wife (Melisa Sözen) and divorced sister (Demet Akbag). With the arrival of a snowy winter, the relationships between the three deteriorate to a disturbing extent.There is little physical violence in the movie (a slap in the face and an animal shot dead), but the amount of psychological conflict is unsettling. Superb performances and a sharp script make the increasingly venomous confrontations between characters riveting.Once again, writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan borrows from great Russian literature: a tense sequence with an envelope full of money is a possible homage to a famous scene in The Idiot, and I counted at least three short tales by Anton Chekhov which inspired various plot developments (A Nightmare, The Wife, Excellent People). 8/10

There is no gainsaying that this is an incredibly beautiful movie, or that the dialog is well written. The problem is that there is much, too much of it. Comparisons to Shakespeare overlook the fact that Shakespeare is a marvel of economy - and also that he wrote action plays, by and large. Each of the dialogs is well-written - but there are too many of them. And with all the talk, some important points of character are never resolved. The central character is Aydin, a retired actor and heir to a number of rental estates in Anatolia. His wife is decades younger. How did they meet? How did the unlikely marriage take place? What did she want or expect? Etc.None of this is addressed - instead everything is expressed in present tense. No one except Necla (Aydin's sister) has a personal history, and even that is only partially described. But all of this is actually pretty important to understanding how they came to where they are.I don't mind pictures in which nothing much happens, which is certainly this one. I do have a problem with movies that seem premised on the notion that simple artiness is sufficient. It isn't.Finally, the incredibly dull musical score consists of various piano selections from the romantic masters - sort of like that Bergman picture in which the only music was a Bach unaccompanied cello suite. That tells you all you need to know.

I read some reviews below and ı am surprised. people say that conversations are meanless and long etc... This kind of criticism and comments make no sense. This is not a Hollywood movie which characters say everything directly just because films like these are making for teenage minded people. I mean sometimes you can not say what you want to. sometimes you use long path to home... moreover dialogs are serving the philosophy of movie. This movie is the best of Nuri Bilge's, about ego and contrasts between arrogance-virtue. You can also thing about your attitudes, this film makes you to do so. Main characters's (Aydin) last words are impressive, with these words film having a emotional and touching side. A good movie for people who like thinking about themselves