A more true-to-life portrait of the wounded fragility at the heart of masculinity than all of the Wall Street, gun-toting and lunkhead stereotypes in cinema put together. And, if I can tread a little delicately, almost certainly captures what most grooming is in practice — and all the worse for it, given the utter lack of consequences and the flitting away of the so-called 'investigation'. And it's therefore genuinely fascinating to learn that others don't see it this way at all.
If this didn't live up to Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), I might cite some rather over-acted moments, such as Samet reacting to Nuray and Kenan connecting in the cafe. The issue is less that his reactions were overdone, even though a case could very well be made for that. But rather that they were inconsistent with the far more subtle portrayals throughout the rest of the film. And Sevim was far more assured (and dangerous?) the less she spoke, alas.
(Right, that was a viagra tablet that Samet was popping in the Brechtian bathroom scene, right?)
Our first glimpse of Samet, a tiny speck trudging across a blinding-white landscape, is a typical Ceylan overture: a lone figure dwarfed, spectacularly, by a terrain that reflects his inner desolation. Funny thing is, the closer we get to Samet, the smaller he seems; his outward affability soon melts away, exposing a heart of pettiest permafrost. That, too, is typical of Ceylan: he never mistakes a protagonist for a hero. [He] has also clung, with stubborn consistency, to his formative artistic influences, melding Antonioni’s feel for existential anomie, Tarkovsky’s eye for majestically bleak scenery, and Chekhov’s ear for trivial argument and windy introspection.[…]
[Ceylan is] less interested in crime and punishment, or even the proper allocation of blame, than he is in the accused’s character, or lack thereof, and the way that it is revealed in the bureaucratic grind of the ensuing investigation.
— Justin Chang (The New Yorker)
In one surprise moment, both viewer and characters are suddenly popped out of their context, reframing everything we’ve been watching. Suddenly we see Samet as a man who is performing for everyone; he is telling his story instead of living it.
— Alissa Wilkinson (The New York Times)
Synopsis: A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.