Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11758 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-07-06
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Turkish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 104 minutes

Synopsis
This Turkish film, which played in competition at Cannes, centres on a family that decides to play blind, deaf, and dumb to the various troubles in their lives. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (CLIMATES), this drama was its country's submission to the Oscars in 2008.

Customer Reviews

Remarkable.
I was hooked by this film. It's a compelling story: a selfish flight from personal responsibility forms the seed for a thin vine of desire which eventually cracks the foundations of a working class family. The casting and performances are first rate - Hatice Aslan as the wife and mother, wields a striking, classical beauty and maintains a haunted presence. The film revolves around and rests on her complex ambivalence.

As much as I love the film and wish to celebrate Mr. Ceylan's familiar, gorgeous imagery, I believe that the images themselves raised more questions with the occasionally overwrought visual touches than helped to serve the film. This is a more arresting-looking film than either "Distant" or "Climates." Mr. Ceylan's typically stripped-down narrative is well served by his flawless photographer's eye for composition - his pacing is perfect, echoing the authority of a master like Abbas Kairostami.

However, in a few instances the manner in which filters/post-production/visual effects were used I found distracting. In a lesser filmmaker, or one whose stories are less contemplative one could ignore these touches. In this story it made the narrative feel perhaps less important than the images. Or there was less concern about the tale than taking certain risks with the images. Whatever the reason, I fell out of the story at those moments, noticing the filmmaker manipulating the image, albeit to create something remarkable. I don't wish to imply that these rare moments ruined a great film; simply that it made me care less.

All this points to a more complicated discussion about photographing emotional states and capturing that indefinable, relational electricity between characters, which ultimately is very personal. On it's own terms, "Three Monkeys" remains a powerful film and stylistic risks aside, I've enjoyed watching it several times.
I highly recommend it.

A Stunning and Intense Work of Art
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is quickly becoming my favourite all time director. He deals in subtle tensions, stark, slow and intriguing camera shots a la Tarkovsky (but the shots don't strike one as elegaic as Tarkovsky, partly because Nuri Bilge Ceylan doesn't use a lot of camera movement) and incredible focus, plot-wise, on the problems of the 21st Century.

In this film it seems that the ingredients are all pulling perfectly in the same direction. A husband takes the fall for his politician friend and is jailed while his friend is voted in. His son provides the contrast to how the younger generation reacts and understands the father's situation. The wife then has an illicit affair with the politician friend while her husband is in jail. As with Uzak, the characters' actions, along with their psychic twists and turns, are moulded slowly and thoughtfully (not to everyone's taste I admit) and the film looks starker and more thriller-like, image-wise, than Uzak was.

Three Monkeys also acts as a great analysis of political denial, and I like the way that it intertwines the personal and the political in taking on an analysis and criticism of the family as a whole. The title also intrigues... are these three characters simply animals who have evolved in order to play dumb about themselves and each other? Is it a metaphor for the corruption of Turkish politics and Turkish culture? The movie is deep enough to probe these questions in their fundamental and universal aspects though, which, I think, a good piece of art should strive to do.

All in all, the question of political denial, political will and political risk-taking all seem to me to be very intriguing human problems in 2009, and, under Bilge Ceylan's subtle and engaging direction, make for a stunning and illuminating statement.