Really Surprised!

Boring

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I'm sometimes tempted to make a big deal about the diminished status of foreign-language film, especially when it comes to cinema from unfamiliar countries and non-name-brand filmmakers. Once upon a time that kind of adventurousness represented a kind of cultural aspiration: Even people who never watched such movies vaguely knew they were supposed to, and felt defensive about it. (That defensiveness still comes up sometimes, as in the infamous "cultural vegetables" debate a couple of years ago.) Does this decline represent the xenophobic, self-centered, immediate-gratification quality of contemporary pop culture? Well, maybe. But I can't get too excited about it. There's only so much free time in our overworked lives, and a whole lot more watchable TV than there used to be. The number of people willing to break free of comfortable routine and seek out something like Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's intimate, spectacular and masterful new drama "Winter Sleep" is necessarily pretty small.I get it, believe me. If I hadn't spent years going to film festivals and being indoctrinated into a particular way of seeing, I probably wouldn't have heard of Ceylan either, nor would I look forward to each of his new movies with such eagerness. But now that I've tried to drive you away, let me lure you back: "Winter Sleep," winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, is not some impenetrable or arduous art film, full of ambiguous silences and featureless landscapes. (And I say that as someone who will willingly watch such a thing.) It's a gorgeous and luminous work, driven by amazing scenery and affecting human tragedy, that captures the themes driving Ceylan's work and the peculiar cultural status of Turkey, a nation that literally straddles the border between the secular West and the Islamic world. Give this mysterious wide-screen experience 10 minutes, and it absolutely will not let you go. (I'm not going to tell you the daunting running time in precise terms; let's just say you should have dinner first.)Like Ceylan's last film, the slo-mo police drama "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (also amazing, but admittedly a more demanding a viewing experience), "Winter Sleep" is set along a kind of internal border within Turkey, where the nation's educated, Westernized elite encounters deeply rooted traditional culture. Its central character – it would be a stretch to call him the hero – is a retired actor named Aydin, played by Haluk Bilginer, himself an eminent Turkish stage and screen actor who's also done numerous roles in English (including five years on the British soap "EastEnders"). Aydin is a prominent landlord and hotel proprietor in a remote village of Cappadocia, the high plateau of central Anatolia that's loaded with archaeological and geographical splendors and famous for its wild horses. He has a much younger wife named Nihal (the gorgeous Melisa Sözen) who has clearly fallen out of love with him, an embittered divorced sister named Necla (Demet Akbag), and an increasingly acrimonious relationship with an impoverished tenant family who haven't paid their rent in months. Soak all of that in booze, snow, egotism and genteel decay, and it's a combustible combination.I described "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" as an episode of "CSI" transported to the Turkish outback and rewritten by Anton Chekhov, and while the influence was obvious it was a better guess than I realized. "Winter Sleep" is actually adapted from a story by Chekhov, who was obsessed by many of the same intertwined issues of class, caste, property and history that preoccupy Ceylan. While "Winter Sleep" never seems "political" in the narrow or most obvious sense, Aydin's predicament has everything to do with Turkey's peculiar status between East and West, hemmed in on one side by godless European amorality and on the other by the fiery sword of jihad. One of Aydin's deadbeat tenants is an imam (Serhat Mustafa Kiliç), who is embarrassingly servile to Aydin's face and then curses him behind his back. The imam's brother, an unemployed ex-con named Ismail (Nejat Isler), is less hypocritical, and views Aydin and his wife with a sardonic, predatory intensity that points toward a shocking final confrontation.It's Ismail's preteen son who provides the most obvious inciting incident, breaking Aydin's windshield with a stone in an effort to avenge his father's humiliation. But if that event didn't send these people on a downward spiral, something else would have. There is also Aydin's deepening suspicion that Nihal is having an affair, his thwarted desire to purchase and tame one of the region's wild horses, and his attempt to forge a friendship with a visiting motocross biker who is spending a few days in the hotel. He has settled into the archetypal big-frog-small-pond-role as an eminent citizen of Nowheresville, airing his private grievances in a bitter newspaper column read by no one except his hostile sister, increasingly confronted with his unfulfilled dreams and his deepening unhappiness.But if Aydin is a merciless lampoon of the disempowered intellectual, and perhaps a distorted artistic self-portrait (Ceylan is a 55-year- old filmmaker married to a younger woman; his wife, Ebru, has co-written his last three films), the work that surrounds him is a dense social tapestry, where the intimate, firelit interiors and the severe, astonishing landscape form a symphonic counterpoint. Ceylan and cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki have forged an artistic collaboration that may drive film-studies theses of the future; the obvious corollary would be the long partnership between Sven Nykvist and Ingmar Bergman, another artist whose influence runs strong in Ceylan's films.If I'm called upon to tell you what "Winter Sleep" is about, then the correct answer is not that it's about an aging actor's failing marriage or the class wars of a snowbound tourist village. And yes, it's "about" Turkey, but I guarantee you that Ceylan would not claim some variety of human experience can be found in Turkey that is not found in Oklahoma or Brazil.

NBC, the director is an engineer and philosopher of axiology. His technical skill is gifted with an artistic approach. He's not directing, he's mastering his thoughts on screen. This film tells a story about values, relations, customs, behaviours and simply "human things." It's a little bit long but it's also part of the story. You have fun in life, as well as boredom. You have time, as well as a need of time continuously. A moment may be too long but life may come short. We're not satisfied with what we have. Time is an example of this valuation. Time is a measure of our relativity. Winter Sleep demonstrates this in an artistic way. If you're a kind of curious, you'll ask some questions when the film is over. Human relations will be a philosophical opportunity. You'll enjoy bounding ties between relations and relativity.

Winter Sleep is a long movie. At three hours and 15 minutes, this film will make you actually look at your clock before hitting play. It won Palm d'Or at Cannes and I had no idea of any of this until I saw it on Netflix this week. There's a lot of substance to this movie and a great deal can be said and debated philosophically. I'll just stick to what really stood out for me.The Disconnect Between ClassesAydin, the protagonist of the movie, is a wealthy man, well educated and, in kid mind, generous and kind to those around him. What becomes apparent early on in the film is that he is also detached from the practical ongoings of his estate. His property is rented out and managed by lawyers and helpers, he does not know his own tenants, and he's oblivious to the issues they are having.When a kid breaks his car window with a stone, he's shocked and surprised. He does not realize that debt collectors and the police had a conflict with the kid's father, that the father has no job, and that they live of one person's wage. If this were a more predictable film, you would expect Aydin to realize these details. It doesn't happen! In fact, the only way Aydin tries to help the less fortunate is by donating a great sum of money to the charity his wife, Nihal, is organizing.This same disconnect is present in my own life, and likely in the life of many of the people around me in the same social class and age group. Our idea of helping the less fortunate is donating to charity once a year or jumping on some online viral bandwagon every so often. And do we really do it to help, or do we do it to help ourselves feel good?Just like Aydin writes a weekly column in the local paper, so do we write our blogs and Tweets and Facebook posts preaching whats's right and showing off our opinions and moral stances. But in the end, how many of us actually take action or speak from experience rather than simply from philosophical realms?The Physical SeparationWhat is captivating about the movie from the get-go is the setting. It's filmed in Cappadocia, Anatolia, a region of Turkey. The landscape and the homes are truly unique. Aydin lives with his wife and sister in a hotel they own. This hotel is built into the mountain, in a way, and it has the feeling of a castle. Aydin is like a kind ruler, and this castle is separating him from the rest of the people, adding to the idea of disconnect.While he sees himself as a sort of benevolent ruler, we quickly see that practically nobody feel this way about him and he's actually disliked even by his own family. His helper runs all errands, and the ruler sits oblivious in his tower. His sister challenges his moral standpoint on the notion of evil; his wife feels like a prisoner with no purpose in life; his subjects despise him behind his back.This separation does not happen only in remote regions. This separation is a daily reality in the society we live in. Very few people live in communities where they interact with their neighbours, or even with their own family. People are separated by vast geographical distances, going far from home in search of materialistic gains. And even those who stay close often just shut themselves in, watching Netflix all day or spending hours on their smart phones. Aydin fails to see past the his own mountain fortress. We fail to see past our computer screens.Making the Best of What You HaveSad ideas aside, there is a sense of redemption buried somewhere in the snow. Aydin claims he worked all his life, and it is only in his old age that he's as wealthy as we see him. Maybe it's unfair to judge him so harshly. Maybe he was not really meant to be a ruler and his detachment is a byproduct of his lack of interest and his moral high ground. He used to be an actor and his current goal is to write a book on the history of Turkish theater. That's not so wrong, is it? A quiet life on top of a mountain, removed from the problems of the village? Isn't that what many of us want after a life of work?And what about the tenants who failed to pay rent for many months? If they lived in Canada, they would have been kicked out a long time ago! It's clear that even though the people around Aydin are unhappy, he's actually content with his station in life. He tells Nihal that he still realizes the value of having a warm room and a roof over his head, while she talks about doing greater things in life. I couldn't help but agree with Aydin: we often forget what we have and, like Nihal, we get stressed with wanting more and more from life. A simple shift in focus could make us happy: just focus on what you have and consider that billions of others would give anything to have a full fridge, a warm house, and people who love them.There: I tried to end it on a more positive note! Hope you will watch this long but rewarding movie! Thank you for reading.

Hitchcock, the great man, said that drama is life with the boring bits cut out (He'd know). Unfortunately in this film, all the boring bits were left in. And then some. If it hadn't won the Palme De Yawn, you wouldn't find the type of sycophantic reviews currently on display. 'Stunning' 'Emotional' 'Masterful' – Incredible what people can project so they can feel superior. Let's get down to the bones. Yes there is drama here. About 45 mins worth. That's being generous. It is beautifully shot. The locations are wonderful. The direction is more than competent. There is a certain amount of poetry and/or style involved. No doubting any of that. However, let's get to the heart of the issue. At three hours fifteen, its two hours too long. Snail paced Euro films are great. I love them. Yet the conversations within go into a loop. It's like a bad argument where no one makes new ground yet on it goes, repeating itself. Any self-respecting person would have walked away after assessing the time they were wasting. A good editor could have created something decent out of this. There is interest within the scenes, only because it fools you into thinking that something significant is about to happen. It's a lie. Your life, on a bad day, is much more captivating. It's a shame because the performances are very good. Set within the famous French Film Festival after a couple of joints and a bottle of Cab Sav I'll say this is the best film ever too, at least since the previous year when 'Blue is the Warmest Colour' won, (which was worth its three hours). This simply feels like a director set free without the reins of a producer with balls. Perhaps prior success earned him carte blanche. Perhaps given the turmoil north of its borders, the fact that Turkey produced it made an impact. I hate saying that because I've been to Turkey and they do make great films but political correctness (righteousness) has never been more powerful than now.There's cinematic poetry here, without a doubt, especially given its promising beginning. Real artistry. It mostly occurs in the short outdoor scenes that are edited like a normal, albeit, art film. It's the extended yawn parade indoors that ruins this film. It will be forgotten about in less than a year. In ten years from now, people will be laughing that it received as much acclaim as it did. In fact it will be completely forgotten. Its limpid conclusion will be the metaphor for its ultimate footnote.