Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

lasttimeisaw A wisp of smoke pluming from the tussock, this is the opening shot of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'or winning tome WINTER SLEEP, and it impeccably recapitulates what Ceylan angles to reify: the cosmically intangible yet intrinsically tangible incapability of communication among us humans. Our protagonist is the salt-and-pepper, middle-aged Aydin (Bilginer), a quondam thespian (a term which he prefers than "actor"), who runs a mountaintop hotel called "Othello" in Cappadocia of the Central Anatolia. For those who are au fait with Ceylan's track record and artistic felicity, it comes as an invigorating surprise to see a concise-to-wordy volte-face here, as this 196-minutes saga is chiefly composed of long-winded conversation segments (with no embellishment of accompaniments to boot), only intermediately larded with its ongoing actions and the sublime, postcard-ready shots of the magnificent topography of the locale, which is able to rouse even the most torpid wanderlust out of hibernation, Ceylan assures us its natural beauty is unadulterated and the film would land on its feet eventually through its dramaturgic toil. With winter looming around, the hotel business is in its troughs, but Aydin's sedate life is slowly descending into a personal quagmire due to both in-house and extraneous forces. The crisis within is the irreconcilable rift between him and his closest kin, namely his divorced sister Necla (Akbag, coalescing a languid easiness with sharp-edged spite) and his wife Nihal (Sözan), who is only half of his age. Their first debate is about Necla's "not resisting evil" supposition, an airy-fairy notion completely throws oneself on the mercy of other's quarter, before soon it exacerbates into many a personal snide, between Necla and Nihal firstly, then a protracted sibling verbal sparring adding insult to injury, from introspectively dialectical to deliberately catty, Ceylan hits home with his onion-peeling relentlessness to censure a detrimental propensity among intelligentsia: constantly attempting to earn one-upmanship by thinly-veiled denigration. Apparently, Aydin wins this round and Necla willfully takes her bow and never returns thenceforth. The meat of Aydin and Nihal's nuptial rub comes to the fore later, starkly chaste, their relationship has already been on the rocks for years, Nihal tries to ease her "trophy wife" shame by plunging into a fund-raising business for schools and children, refusing Aydin's interference of any kind, apart from accepting his anonymous charity from time to time. She cannot bear his non- threatening but chronically encroaching superciliousness, yet has no moxie to put the kibosh on their marriage in gridlock. As for Aydin, he sees all too well of Nihal's fix and cunningly barters his subservience for her entrapment "I love you, and I know you don't love me, but you cannot get your cake and eat it too!", that is the connotation. The cruel manifestation of selfish love from those who are endowed with clout and money. And later in a conversation with a local teacher Levent (Saribacak, exemplifies cogently how to shoot the booze-emboldened sideswipes), which goes argumentative, Aydin seemingly has the final say with a caustic rejoinder but the subsequent spewing betrays that an inward damage is done.Outwardly, it is the gap between castes that writs large and cannot be mediated, the family of Aydin's hard-up tenants, brothers Hamdi (Kiliç) and Ismail (Isler) cannot pay their rent on time and the ensuing dispute becomes rather ugly, and when a broken car window impels Hamdi to humble himself in front of a condescending Aydin, the Janus-faced reality seeps into the scenario in both castes, from smile to curse, from bonhomie to grumbling, all in a trice, even Aydin's chauffeur/assistant Hidayet (Pekcan), who is not above to hector those less fortunate tenants, but meanwhile has to carry all his master's luggage in a snowfall day, with the latter wandering with idle hands, so it is not surprising to see him one minute ago promise to keep a secret at the behest of Aydin and the next minute, casually divulges it to another party on the phone, the well-adjusted equilibrium between obedience and defiance is all too close to home.Indubitably, WINTER SLEEP is first and foremost, an actor's showpiece, leading actor Haluk Bilginer competently hammers out his delivery on the strength of his word-wielding expertise and telegraphs Aydin's inscrutable train of thought when lines are not proffered. Melisa Sözen, on the other hand, brilliantly portrays a more emotionally readable persona and her best scenes are in the cathartic episode, when Nihal tries to use money to buy her conscience in front of a seething Nejat Isler (emotive with a commensurate restraint, upstaging the rest in his two scenes), and the story reaches its apogee, but in post-mortem, it is a missing opportunity that Ceylon doesn't apply his "not resisting evil" theory for a trial run here, which in return points up Ceylon's own guarded and idealized stance of the have-nots: they are willing to die for dignity, the only remnant left for them to weaponize. An illuminating stew of the perennial vagaries (religion, philosophy, morality and class stratification, etc.) obstructing our day-to-day communications, WINTER SLEEP mark's Ceylon's highest achievement so far for his profound perspective in fleshing out a conundrum that is elementally complex and sophisticatedly widespread.

em-chandelier An epic, great film, one of the masterpieces of cinema of all times. The acting is absolutely fantastic, the actors actually take a grip of the viewer and one cannot but be bewitched by them. The setting in Anatolia and shots are great, contrasting greatly with Western cinema so full of clichés and stereotypes about relationships. Each scene is like a painting, a painting which breathes of life, simplicity, and complexity at the same time. The story is to be understood on multiple levels, yet there are great questions to be answered probably only after the film has finished, it contains probably some of the great themes of humanity, all surrounded by the great enigma we call 'life'. A great film for all times.

Razvan Ungureanu Winter Sleep is a long movie. At three hours and 15 minutes, this film will make you actually look at your clock before hitting play. It won Palm d'Or at Cannes and I had no idea of any of this until I saw it on Netflix this week. There's a lot of substance to this movie and a great deal can be said and debated philosophically. I'll just stick to what really stood out for me.The Disconnect Between ClassesAydin, the protagonist of the movie, is a wealthy man, well educated and, in kid mind, generous and kind to those around him. What becomes apparent early on in the film is that he is also detached from the practical ongoings of his estate. His property is rented out and managed by lawyers and helpers, he does not know his own tenants, and he's oblivious to the issues they are having.When a kid breaks his car window with a stone, he's shocked and surprised. He does not realize that debt collectors and the police had a conflict with the kid's father, that the father has no job, and that they live of one person's wage. If this were a more predictable film, you would expect Aydin to realize these details. It doesn't happen! In fact, the only way Aydin tries to help the less fortunate is by donating a great sum of money to the charity his wife, Nihal, is organizing.This same disconnect is present in my own life, and likely in the life of many of the people around me in the same social class and age group. Our idea of helping the less fortunate is donating to charity once a year or jumping on some online viral bandwagon every so often. And do we really do it to help, or do we do it to help ourselves feel good?Just like Aydin writes a weekly column in the local paper, so do we write our blogs and Tweets and Facebook posts preaching whats's right and showing off our opinions and moral stances. But in the end, how many of us actually take action or speak from experience rather than simply from philosophical realms?The Physical SeparationWhat is captivating about the movie from the get-go is the setting. It's filmed in Cappadocia, Anatolia, a region of Turkey. The landscape and the homes are truly unique. Aydin lives with his wife and sister in a hotel they own. This hotel is built into the mountain, in a way, and it has the feeling of a castle. Aydin is like a kind ruler, and this castle is separating him from the rest of the people, adding to the idea of disconnect.While he sees himself as a sort of benevolent ruler, we quickly see that practically nobody feel this way about him and he's actually disliked even by his own family. His helper runs all errands, and the ruler sits oblivious in his tower. His sister challenges his moral standpoint on the notion of evil; his wife feels like a prisoner with no purpose in life; his subjects despise him behind his back.This separation does not happen only in remote regions. This separation is a daily reality in the society we live in. Very few people live in communities where they interact with their neighbours, or even with their own family. People are separated by vast geographical distances, going far from home in search of materialistic gains. And even those who stay close often just shut themselves in, watching Netflix all day or spending hours on their smart phones. Aydin fails to see past the his own mountain fortress. We fail to see past our computer screens.Making the Best of What You HaveSad ideas aside, there is a sense of redemption buried somewhere in the snow. Aydin claims he worked all his life, and it is only in his old age that he's as wealthy as we see him. Maybe it's unfair to judge him so harshly. Maybe he was not really meant to be a ruler and his detachment is a byproduct of his lack of interest and his moral high ground. He used to be an actor and his current goal is to write a book on the history of Turkish theater. That's not so wrong, is it? A quiet life on top of a mountain, removed from the problems of the village? Isn't that what many of us want after a life of work?And what about the tenants who failed to pay rent for many months? If they lived in Canada, they would have been kicked out a long time ago! It's clear that even though the people around Aydin are unhappy, he's actually content with his station in life. He tells Nihal that he still realizes the value of having a warm room and a roof over his head, while she talks about doing greater things in life. I couldn't help but agree with Aydin: we often forget what we have and, like Nihal, we get stressed with wanting more and more from life. A simple shift in focus could make us happy: just focus on what you have and consider that billions of others would give anything to have a full fridge, a warm house, and people who love them.There: I tried to end it on a more positive note! Hope you will watch this long but rewarding movie! Thank you for reading.

westsideschl It takes script, acting and directorial skill to keep a film flowing while still captivating for over three (3) hours. Some credit goes to Chekov for the framework of isolating peoples of different educational; economic; status; etc. backgrounds in one isolated arena and let them duke it out - verbally. The other credit goes to the carved cave dwellings, some of which date back about a thousand years while others are more recent, of the more recent some are quite elaborately constructed, one of which is the film's setting - a modern caved hotel. Incidentally, the source material for the hills/cliffs is volcanic ash - Tuff (looks like sandstone), a serene natural beauty contrast to the human personalities. Film should have been titled "Winter Storm" as a cabin fever style escalation of verbosity, mostly on issues that range from individual/personal values of the film's characters to more abstractly, human values in general, begin to provoke animosities and distrust. The central foil is the hotel owner, Aydin, and because of his appropriately stone like demeanor the diatribes just bounce off of him; even seeming to reflect more of the accusers themselves. I'm inclined to think that a bit more editing would have produced the same film in a little shorter length, but then too we live in a time driven, multitasking environment in contrast to the film's appropriate - time moves glacially slow setting. So the film's molasses slow tedium may have had a purpose.