Cast: Yavuz Bingöl, Hatice Aslan

Cinematographer: Gokhan Tiryaki

Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Release date: 3 rd October 2008

Language: Turkish

A scene from the movie

It’s an age-old story. It could be set in any place. Any time. Master commits an inadvertent crime. He convinces his servant, in this case his driver, to take the fall. With promises of money. The master, here a politician, gives his word that in exchange for loyalty, the servant’s family would be taken care of. Once the driver is in prison, has the driver’s wife in bed with himself before you can blink. Driver’s morose son who keeps on failing the university exams chances upon the dirty secret. Stuff of afternoon melodramas. Sometimes it’s the story, sometimes the storyteller. Here, it’s definitely the latter. Ceylan paints his bleak tale using an austere palette of saturated blues, greens and ochre yellows. What he chooses to show, what he chooses to keep beyond the edges of the screen keeps this from being yet another familiar story of familial woe.

In the brief prologue we see a middle-aged guy driving along a dark road through the woods. He’s drowsy. His eyelids keep drooping. The shadows creep onto the camera’s field of vision as the car goes into the distance. Cut to the next scene. A crumpled body is lying in the middle of the road. The car is standing on the roadside with its headlights on. Ceylan sticks to this technique throughout. Never once showing the actual act. Instead, he lingers and broods upon the consequences. He observes the gradual deconstruction of the character’s lives.

And it’s not a pleasing sight. The aging wife smoothening the wrinkles around her eyes with make-up before a tryst with her lover. Making vain attempts to communicate with her son. The son spending hours motionless in bed staring at the ceiling. Going about his activities mechanically. The father in prison asking the son whether he or his mother goes to collect the monthly payments. Probably, he has a tendency towards jealous suspicions. Or he is aware of the politician’s predilections.

Once the father gets out of jail, things fall apart pretty rapidly. The powder keg was anyway already there waiting to be kindled. In one intense sequence of non-confrontation, husband and wife skirt around fears of facing the consequences of their actions. It ends up in physical altercation but the words are never spoken.

It’s always difficult to find an appropriate ending for such movies. Ceylan falters somewhat in that department. Ending it ten minutes earlier would have been perfect. At least that was what I felt. That does not mean I wouldn’t like to sit through it again to soak in the atmosphere and the desolation of the urban landscapes.

I haven’t seen any of Ceylan’s previous features. He is known to dispense with the plot in his lyrical movies. In departure from that ‘Three monkeys’ has sufficient plot. In each carefully crafted scene, you can hear the background sounds with amazing clarity. Children playing outside in the street, the train passing by. But it’s the brooding visual poetry, which tells you that this director is someone to watch out for. He has the rare ability to take an oft-told worn out story and tell it anew.

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