Winter Sleep (2014)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Winter Sleep (Turkish: Kis Uykusu) (2014) Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Watched: May 24, 2018 Rating: 8/10 {Clue: Was filmed in this gorgeous plateau in Turkey; also known as Asian Turkey} A "contemplative cinema" film quite difficult to summarize- about so little, yet so much. Numerous tea-drinking, dialogue-limited, superfluous scenes where nothing of value occurs- there is no plot but it overflows with complex themes and psychological intensity (My two favorite questions: Can you force someone into an inevitability of remorse by not resisting their evil? and "Conscience", "Morals", "Principles", "Purpose"; The one who uses these words the most is perhaps the most highly suspect?) Aggressive, drawn-out discussions between brother and sister; passive-aggressive arguments between husband and wife; circuitous conversations between landlord and tenant; all create an impressively tangible and physical tenseness in the viewer- yet the characters meet with very little resolution. The ending is many things at once: devastating, difficult to understand, even more difficult to accept, and leaves one with much to ponder (That much money, wasted! How can one's pride be worth that much?) Ostensibly about a retired actor who now owns a hotel and multiple properties in meagerly populated Cappadocia, spending most of his time researching and writing, Loneliness, morality, religion, philosophy, family, marriage, philanthropy, pride, parenthood, social consciousness, the disparity between classes, though- these are the real characters. Incredible cinematography- especially some of the scenery shots in the dead of winter (My favorite is the releasing of the horse into the wild on a winter night.) Although needlessly lengthy, manages to allure with a beautiful shot or profound dialogue as boredom begins to set in. ---- Acrostic is a form of poetry where the first letters in each line, paragraph, or word are doubly used to spell a name, phrase, or word. The word "acrostic" comes from the Greek words "akros" (outermost) and "stichos" (line of verse). Read the appropriate letters in the poem vertically to reveal the extra message, called the "acrostich"! #Acrostic #PoemReview #AboutSoMuchMore #PalmedOr #Turkish

I agree with the critics that have compared it to something like an epic Russian novel with its penetrating observations on the human condition and philosophical musings. The film deals with a whole host of issues like pride, how we create our own prison, how we protect ourselves through self-deception, how ego can fuel seemingly charitable motivations, how we can suffocate others through good intentions, generational divisions, the notion of resisting evil in order to bring out the good in others (which sparks a darkly humorous debate among the characters).I found the film to be very shrewdly written in how it constantly reinforced certain character traits in different contexts. As I stated before, the character of Aydin (even while instructing others that the road to hell is paved with good intentions) likes to justify himself with his good intentions and doesn't want to mislead people: he defers the tenant to his partner about the debt, he's always reading his articles on potentially touchy issues to his sister for feedback, and even little things like the way he expresses uncertainty to the client about the Omar Sharif movie that was filmed in the area and how he examines the pictures on his website after the client asks about the horses at the hotel (the horse being captured and subsequently set free was also a nice touch of symbolism).

First of all let me tell you my complete disbelief of such a high rating for this movie. I try to understand why people would give it such a high rating but I must be too dumb to get it because honestly this movie is so boring I had to watch in three times and even then I almost fell asleep three times. Don't get me wrong, the actors are all good, the filming is good as well. But it doesn't matter if you have the best actors possible or the worst actors possible, if you make a movie about the extremely boring life of extremely boring people then you get an extremely boring movie. And if you make a movie that last for more then three hours about nothing then you get an extremely long boring movie. Because let me tell you, and here is a spoiler, so if you want to stop reading this review before I spoil it for you then this is the moment. This movie is about nothing and it last more then three hours. Unbelievable people like that kind of nonsense. I simply don't get it.

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.