Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a film about light. On a plot-level, it's about a group of policemen in Anatolia driving around one night trying to find the place where two murderers buried their victim, which they can't recognize because the light was different. So the first half is litterally about people waiting for the light to change - and as soon as morning comes, one hour and twenty minutes into the film, they find it immediately. But also, as anyone who has read one of the many hyperbolic reviews can attest, the visuals of the film is all about light as well: The streaks of car-light in the Anatolian grass; the flashes of lightning illuminating the mysterious stone-face; and of course - who can forget - the scene where they drink tea at gaslight. So yeah, the film is a 157 min murder mystery, which actually mainly consists of people driving around, drinking tea, and looking out of windows, and it's a masterpiece mainly due to the ligthening. And why on earth do some people think that is weird?
I might have been thinking a bit much about light at this showing of the film. I came right from the National Gallery of Denmark, from an arrangement which took place in the room dedicated to paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi. One of the most famous Danish painters, most of his famous pictures depict interiors, doors, windows, people with their backs to the viewer, and much of his fame derive from his depiction of light. He died nearly one hundred years ago, fashion has changed, the city looks different. But the light remains the same. If a painting can be a masterpiece due to the way it shows light, then why can't a film? Film IS light. It's projected light on a screen. Yet to be honest, I rarely think that a filmmaker is great due to the way he/she uses light. Of late, there is Michael Mann and the way he uses digital to show the streetlights of LA in Collateral and Miami in Miami Vice. And I love the single-source lightening of Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth, which at times looks like a Rembrandt painting. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is definitely at the same level of achievement in light. And, like the rest of these artists of light, the use of light in ...Anatolia says a lot about the place it depicts. You could only get the light of the first half in a place like Anatolia. Or, more correctly, you could only get this kind of contrast between pitch-black night and blinding headlights in a place like hilly, lightly populated Anatolia. If you tried to make it in a country like Denmark, you could never get far enough away from villages, farms, country houses. The image of police-car headlights beaming out over grassy hillsides says a lot about the state of Western Turkey in 2011. About how far modernity has reached into this area. It is streaks, it is flashes. It's not firmly entrenched. In the home of the mayor of a nearby village, the wind will still knock out electricity, leading to the aforementioned gaslight intermezzo. And instead of paying for a better electrical system, the money in the village will go to a better morgue.
Let's talk metaphor for a mo. Light and shadow has been intrinsic to crime cinema since at least film noir. And light has been a metaphor for truth and reason since at least, well, the enlightenment. Sun is wisdom. Moon is mysterius wisdom. But in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, we never see the sun, and the moon is only glimpsed shortly. When morning arrives by a sudden cut, there isn't any triumphant rays of dawn. There is an overcast sky, pale light, and morning fog. In the same way, the solving of the crime at the center of the film is never a triumph of reasoning. It's a farcical and tirering procedure. To be a bit hyperbolic: This isn't a crimefilm from an enlightened country. Or, more accurately, at the least it's not a film drenched in the ideologic idea of the 'crimefighter', fighting for truth and justice, etc. That is so often what the detective is in Western cinema, a fighter in the battle for reason: Sherlock Holmes using scientific deduction to disprove the superstitious idea of a ghost-dog. The pale dawn of justice in ...Anatolia is the dawn of a country not really sure of the role of it's executive branch of power. This kind of sceptical crime-film isn't unique to Turkey, but is fairly common to crime films from all over the fringes of the 'West'. The filmmaker most concerned with this question might be Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboi, whose 'Police, Adjective' is probably the best example. In this film, a young police-man is reluctantly doing a pointless investigation into a young marihuana-dealer, while also discusising the merits of the case. Other examples of films discussing the state of the nation through an innovative look at a crime could be Argentines Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman and Iranian Asghar Farhadi's A Separation. These films combine a central mystery with a look at the more or less dysfunctional institutions of society getting at the truth of it. Another comparison might be to a film like David Fincher's Zodiac. This is also sort of an anti-crime film, but it's still a film about crime-fighters, and truth-seekers, the point is just that they are unsuccessful.
Compare with the doctor of ...Anatolia. He is a skeptic, he refuses to believe in the mysterius story the prosecutor tells. But when his obduction of the victim uncovers an awful piece of evidence, he covers it up. To understand this, we have to realize that the film actually shows us two parallel crime-stories. (And this is where this post gets REALLY spoilery, so beware) On the one hand we in the audience get clues as to what happened: That it wasn't Kenan but his little brother Ramazan who killed Yasar, but Kenan is protecting his brother - and probably feeling guilty over cuckolding his friend Yasar. Knowing this, the realisation that Yasar was buried alive points to Kenan being too drunk to realize what happened, and burying him in a panic. But through the ramblings of commisar Naci, we can see another narrative being build: A narrative in which Kenan savagely killed Yasar due to a conflict over Yasar's wife. In this narrative. which isn't the true narrative, but in all likelihood would be the official narrative, the evidence that Yasar was buried alive would be indicative of truly inhuman evilness. The doctor ignoring the dirt in Yasar's throat is him accusing the Turkish court-system for being unable to achieve the truth in the case.
Few films need a second viewing as much as this one. The first half of the film by intent lacks any sort of forward progression: they are trying to find the place where the body is buried, and there's simply nothing to do but wait for the light to change. And then all of a sudden the beautiful night-pictures stop, and instead we watch a tired doctor sitting around waiting for the time when the autopsy will be made. I was bewildered the first time I saw it as well. But so much of the film has stuck with me over time, from small visuals details to the tragicness of the circumstances leading to the murder. And watching it a second time, I was completely bewitched. Once you know that the apple tree will lead to the lambmeat, which means dawn is just around the corner, etc, the episodic nature of the film stops being a concern, and I could fully apreciate the masterful aesthetics of the film, while pondering the subtext, which I can't imagine I'll stop doing from know on. This film is quite simply a stunning work of art.
PS: As we left the Hammershøi-room, my friend commented on the massive contrast with the colourful and energetic paintings in the next room. And the museum really build up that contrast: In the Hammersøi-room the light was dark and moody, while the next room was completely lit up. The surroundings and context really influence the art. I thought of that on this rewatch of ...Anatolia, since the medium was different. Watching the film for the first time, in spring 2012 in London, it was a digital copy, while this time it was on 35 mm. And as the film is so much about light, in a way I don't even think it was the same film I saw. The mood was subtly influenced by the warmer light from the celluloid copy, but the mood is everything in this film. So if anyone has watched it on 35 mm, and think that I'm way too critical of what the light symbolizes about Turkey, well, perhaps I'm still influenced by the harsher, colder, light I saw the first time.
