Three Monkeys

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's beautifully filmed drama, which won him a 2008 Cannes award for directing, is a poetic portrait of flawed individuals facing the consequences of bad decisions. The film opens with a hit-and-run accident, unseen by the audience but signaled by the screech of brakes intruding into the hush of night on a winding country road. A politician named Servet (Ercan Kesal) is behind the wheel, but he persuades his driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), to take the rap—and the prison sentence. It's just business—a private contract with a cash payoff (Eyup's family straddles middle-class aspirations and working-class nervousness, and the money is too good to pass up)—but it signals the beginning of a series of white lies and serious mistakes by Eyup's teenage son, Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), and wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), during his absence. As in his equally intimate Distant and Climates, Ceylan displays an unerring gift for camera placement, lingering on his characters in the wake of the repercussions of their actions, while also observing the human story behind and beyond the headline events with microscopic focus. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)