(dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)
Note: Originally written for the course Temporality: Image And Text, Spring Quarter, taught at The Evergreen State College.
In the opening shot of Once Upon A Time In Anatolia wherein the camera remains stagnant, peering over a valley with a long, winding road in the middle of the frame dividing it in two. It is morning. And, the sun is coming up over the horizon, giving the pastoral scene an ethereal ambience. The camera’s stillness, and the length of the shot held -about five minutes- introduces the film in a slow cinema style. It is a slow film, most certainly, and yet there is still enough action, dialogue, changes of setting, and camera movements speed the pace up notably as the film progresses. This still introductory shot of the landscape presents a crucial concept of the film, that is of the patience the detectives need, and their reserve energy as they traverse the night as the attempt to find where bodies have been buried. The energy in the air is sleepy, inward, perhaps even a bit brooding, but not completely opposite to innocence. There is a pastorality here that has been defiled by these murderers, not simply by the immorality of their actions, or by the physical upheaval of the earth itself, or even by the pollution of the police’s cars (note the line an officer remarks about bringing extra tanks of gasoline to ensure they can travel long distances), but by the nihlism of their actions; eco-nihlism, wherein the police are interacting with the land without grace, destroying its natural beauty, but also not living with passion, treating it as something else, a place that has been literally politicized by it not being within their reach of legal action, and yet because of a loophole -that the crimes were originally commitied within their jurisdiction- they are able to abide within it, but only in the most passive of senses. It is a kind of relation to this modernity that is crushing on the self, not living for one’s passion, one’s soul, and it is similarly dehumanizing to their prisoners, with their lack of physical movement, ability to talk, sleep, or even reprieve themselves by having a smoke, rather in this last note having to “earn” it by aiding in the investigation. This lack of physical movement, of life being lived, by the prisoner is comparable to the stillness of the camera in the introductory shot in how to landscape is presented; living, but only merely there, not being appreciated, allowed to be beautiful in its own way and yet simultaneously unbothered, perhaps even unwelcome. The scenery is a strong visual spectacle throughout, and yet it is still, or rather, a kind of still life. In this sense, it is strongly alike one of the previous films we have watched, Still Life, in how it treats its scenery and setting as a character; there, it is the crumbling Chinese city on a river it depicts, and in Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, it is the landscape of fields, hills, and long, winding roads.