7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
A murder has been committed and a man has confessed; all that remains is for him to lead police to the body so they can wrap the case. In the dead of night, two cars and a Jeep carrying the murderer, the police chief and the prosecutor set out to find the burial spot. As the small convoy inches its way through the darkness of the deserted countryside, it becomes clear that the killer can’t locate the place where he left his victim. Cigarettes are smoked; conversations occur and refreshments are served in a local village; nothing significant seems to happen. Yet whether we are aware of it or not, small clues are being planted along the way.
Starring: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat TanisForeign | 100% |
Drama | 98% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Turkish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Turkish: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Both 48kHz, 24-bit
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Nuri Bilge Ceylan might not be well-known in the U.S., but he's a big name in Eurasian cinema, with a reputation for quiet films that peer through the monotony of everyday lives to get at deeper existential insights. On its surface, the Turkish director's sixth and latest feature, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia—a co-winner of the Grand Prix at 2011's Cannes Film Festival—is an atmospheric police procedural about a murderer, a missing body, and the men whose job it is to crack the case. Beneath the workaday bureaucratic details, though, is a network of intertwined subtexts—male identity and middle-aged insecurities, the disconnect between penal justice and individual ethics, the customs and expectations that define small-town life. This is a rough approximation, but it'll get you close: Imagine a hypothetical version of The Wire, scripted with minimal action by Anton Chekhov, shot in long, pregnant takes by Bergman or Tarkovsky, and set on the arid slopes of rural, middle-of-nowhere Turkey. At a glacially paced 157 minutes, Anatolia will absolutely be too slow and undramatic for some—probably even most—but the film definitely rewards those with the patience to live in its world for a while.
Visually, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is one of the most beautiful and evocative films I've seen this year. Ceylan's usual cinematographer, Gökhan Tiryaki, shot the movie digitally using Sony's F35 high definition camera, and it looks fantastic on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC encode presented in the intended 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Considering the first third of the story takes place at night, source noise is surprisingly minimal, even in the darkest scenes. I was really impressed by the quality of the color grading throughout. The dusky yellow landscape emerging out of the blackness, bathed in the golden glow of headlights—tonally, it's both fairytale-ish and realistic, both Once Upon a Time and Anatolia, so to speak. When the story shifts to morning, the picture is no less striking, with finely tuned contrast, warm skin tones, and a pervasive creamy/dusty cast in the highlights. The level of clarity is consistently excellent too. Facial features, the weft of a scarf, the slightly nappy texture of a wool jacket, the craggy rocks and turned- over soil—everything is sharply rendered without a trace of edge enhancement. And besides a few fleeting instances of aliasing on fine parallel lines, there are no blatant source/encode/compression issues either. Props to Cinema Guild for giving a gorgeous film a near-perfect Blu-ray presentation.
Cinema Guild has given us two audio options, a default Turkish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and a DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo fold-down. Both are plenty capable, but if you've got a multi-channel home theater system you'll obviously want to go with the former. You might be surprised by how immersive and engaging the 5.1 mix actually is. In many ways, this is a quiet film—dialogue heavy, with no score whatsoever—but it has a convincing sense of environmental ambience. Take the first scene; the camera tracks in slowly from outside toward a window, peering in, and we while we hear the muffled voices of the men inside the building coming from the front channels, behind us we also hear crisp outdoor sounds. It's very realistic. And the sound design keeps up this level of acoustic accuracy. Wind blowing through the surrounds. Grisly autopsy noises. Cars moving between channels. There was one thunderclap early in the film that was so intense and believable that it made me jolt in my seat. Dialogue is cleanly recorded and perfectly balanced in the mix, and the disc includes optional English subtitles that appear entirely inside the 2.35:1 frame.
Let's not kid ourselves; Once Upon a Time in Anatolia isn't for everyone. It's decidedly slow, short on dramatic intensity, and maybe frustratingly anti-climactic. But what some might write off as boring—a cop drama without any of the action—others will see as subtle and controlled, a mood piece that's perceptive about male identity and provokes more questions than it gives outright answers. The answers are there, though, for viewers patient enough to absorb and think about the film. This one definitely stands up to repeat viewings. Cinema Guild's Blu-ray presentation does justice to the film's gorgeous cinematography, and the disc is loaded with special features too. Highly recommended!
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