Three Monkeys (2008)

Simply A Masterpiece

How sad is this?

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"Üç Maymun" or as the English title says: "Three Monkeys" is an OK movie, that offers good direction, a handful of good performances and nice visuals, but almost zero originality and little in tension or plot development.Servet kills a person and convinces his driver, Eyüp, to take the blame in exchange for money. But as Eyüp's son Ismail seems to be on a dangerous path, getting into fights and bad companies, Eyüp's wife Hacer decides to go and talk with Servet for an advancement of the money, a decision that will bring unexpected consequences.The movie doesn't offer much in the plot department. It is a traditional story of a dysfunctional family and of power relations, and corruption. The pace is quite contemplative, but assured and clear, and the tinge the whole movie has brings with it the right kind of mood. The actors all do a good job, even if it leans to the stoic kind of, with silences and contained-violence. But the movie lacks the touch that would make it stand out, and it ends becoming just one more of its kind.All in all, it is an interesting movie, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys takes you to Istanbul suburbs to tell you a story about the common vices of humanity: deception and self-deception. Have you ever altered the truth to be able to maintain your order? Simply, played three monkeys? Ignored the fact? Composed of three members, the underprivileged family in this film has no one else in their lives to depend on: the father Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl), driver of a politician, reserved; the mother Hacer (Hatice Aslan), housewife living as if she can break into pieces anytime; and the son İsmail (Rıfat Sungar), not being able to pass the common university entry exam, fooling around being juvenile and far from being a hope for the family. Yet their established balance is lost when the politician hits a pedestrian in a quiet street and asks Eyüp to take the blame for him in return of good cash. Eyüp accepts; he will be taking a great amount of money and will only serve less than a year in the prison, and when he gets out, he will continue working as his driver again. With the closure of eyes to the first lie, others follow. The son "sees" things that he would not tell, the mom does things she would not talk about. There are also bigger things that are not talked about, ghosts of the past. After everything is done, how could they stay together?Considering Tarkovsky has a great deal of influence on Ceylan, this film is indeed not for blockbuster audiences. It has no non-diegetic music, no long dialogues and no fast camera movements. The movie requires the viewer's full attention and participation for revealing itself. But once you are in, it takes you to a great journey and tells you all about the human, incapable or afraid of change. Real change. Not deceptions. You can image that these types of films works on various levels, that's what makes them great. So, let's cut short, for not influencing your thoughts when provoked by the story. Besides from the story and the acting, do I need to mention the film's visuals, or cinematography? Which brought Ceylan the Best Director Award in 2008 Cannes Film Festival?

Most of the Eastern European cinema that makes it over the ocean to US theatres is of the depressing and brutally color-washed variety (see 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days), and this is no exception. Cannes winner for Best Director award, the Turkish film Three Monkeys features a family breaking down from one bad decision following the next. It all starts out with the father deciding to take the fall for a politician involved in a hit-and-run. Then, as the mother gets involved with the politician and the son gets sick, the three of them begin to slowly lose themselves in dysfunction and mis-aimed hatred, building long and subtly into a dramatic tension that never really bursts, but does begin to fill each frame with uncomfortable alacrity. This is the type of movie where you get so involved in the long, methodical takes that you don't notice when it suddenly becomes nearly unbearable to watch these people being so self-destructive, and you realize that, unaccountably, you're completely hooked.An interesting device running throughout the movie is of visitors--not visitors of the neighborly "come over and hang out" variety, but trains, weather, and phone calls interjecting each scene like an unwanted guest, stabbing into the (typically) non-conversation the characters are having and eating away communication like corrosive acid. Then there's the visitor of the dead brother, who comes to comfort the characters at various, incredibly uncanny, points.This is the exact type of movie that most audiences would have a hard time with because it's "slow", but nevertheless there are some scenes so filled with dark energy that it's hard to remember the movie as much more as an electrifying experience. Of particular interest is the mother, whose face reaches the scowling limits of the term "if looks could kill" almost literalized. As much as the cinematography and blocking were fun to look at, this movie eventually became the actors' movies, all considerations of what's going on otherwise lost in the way each one of them somehow managed to have expressions that wouldn't move all while the muscles under their faces writhed and twitched like snakes. Watch that scene as the mother stares over the sea-side again and note how she is not moving at all, but every muscle in her body is going haywire.

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.