Sightlines · reception
How Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was received
2011 · Nuri Bilge Ceylan · Once Upon a Time in Anatolia on Sightlines
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-honor watch — the film cinephiles cite to prove they've done the reading.
Did you know? The story grew out of co-writer Ercan Kesal's real experience as a young doctor in rural Turkey, when he was taken along on an all-night police search much like the one in the film — and Kesal also acts in it.
Named by the director
- Anton Chekhov — Ceylan repeatedly cited Chekhov (a writer, not a filmmaker) as the film's guiding spirit, describing its rhythm and characters as Chekhovian.