Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A group of men lead a search for a victim of a murder to whom a suspect named Kenan and his mentally challenged brother confessed. However, the search is proving more difficult than expected as Kenan is fuzzy as to the body's location. As the group continues looking and the night begins dragging on, its members can't help but chat with each other about everyday life, as the conversations turn more and more serious, revealing their deeper secrets and profound stories.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a masterwork of slow cinema from Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The plot is deceptively simple — a nocturnal search for a buried body — but unfolds as a profound meditation on mortality, guilt, bureaucracy, and masculinity, earning a genuine 4. The ensemble acting is naturalistic and deeply inhabited, with Muhammet Uzuner and Yilmaz Erdogan delivering layered performances that feel utterly unforced. Cinematography by Gökhan Tiryaki is among the finest of the decade, with the Anatolian landscape rendered in breathtaking nocturnal compositions lit by car headlights and moonlight. Novelty is exceptionally high — Ceylan's fusion of police procedural with existential character study, Chekhovian in tone, is entirely singular and unmistakable in voice. The ending, while thematically resonant and deliberately elliptical, is the one area that may frustrate — its studied withholding of catharsis feels intentional but slightly less satisfying than the journey that precedes it, making it the least exceptional dimension in an otherwise towering film.