Once Upon a Time in Anatolia · reception & legacy
2011 · Nuri Bilge Ceylan
How Once Upon a Time in Anatolia has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011 but was greeted as a demanding, punishing sit even by admirers; a decade-plus on it's routinely called Ceylan's masterpiece and placed high in BBC Culture's 2016 critics' poll of the 21st century's greatest films.
What's debated
The eternal fight: hypnotic slow-cinema summit or 157-minute endurance test — with a side debate over whether it's better than Ceylan's actual Palme winner, Winter Sleep.
Its footprint
The shot of an apple tumbling down a hillside into a stream has become one of the most referenced images in modern art cinema, and the headlights sweeping across the dark Anatolian steppe are practically visual shorthand for 'slow cinema'.
Where it stands
A slow-cinema holy text and a Letterboxd badge-of-honour watch — the film cinephiles cite to prove they've done the reading.
Named by the director
Influences Nuri Bilge Ceylan has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Anton Chekhov — Ceylan repeatedly cited Chekhov (a writer, not a filmmaker) as the film's guiding spirit, describing its rhythm and characters as Chekhovian.