Winter Sleep [Blu-ray]

another superb product by Turkey’s best film director
Being Turkish-American and speaking both languages fluently I wish the subtitles were not imposed. Having said that the translations are well made and so is the movie. It’s a philosophical movie with characters reminiscent of those you’re likely to find in life: the lonely middle-aged man, who wants to make a positive impact in the world; a wasteful liberal idealist; a happy-go-lucky optimistic fool; a hard-edged pessimistic borderline criminal; a gossipy minimalist worker, and more. I haven’t yet seen a bad movie by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I’ve seen only two. The other was Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. They are both good movies, but I must qualify ‘good’: I couldn’t watch either in one sitting. They are long-drawn-out, but meaningful, and most importantly made me come back and find out what happens in the end.

Can I give 10 ⭐️
I loved everything about this film. The scenery, the actors the story line, AND the dialogues , the dialogues …. ufff 😍. The film is very long but it’s worth every second of it. Very powerful on what is said and what is left unsaid. The end just melts your heart. I watched it 3 times – I’m trusting that the translation is good because unfortunately I don’t speak Turkish. Please take the time to watch this film you will love it, if you like deep philosophical stuff.

Long movie with hidden gems of insight!
Long, long, long, plodding movie. Dialog driven. You begin to pick up the gist of the movie 1/2 into the movie. This movie is not an “everything works out in the end” movie. You will follow the lives of a family, husband, wife, sister of husband and the interaction between them. There is one heart-rending extravagant moment toward the end of the movie that shocks and breaks your heart. The heartache, sadness and the search for meaning are all there. Of accepting personal responsibility for ones own happiness. Of letting go of the trivial. Beautifully acted and photographed. Worthy for those who enjoy introspection.

you might sleep too…
watch this either on a rainy day and/or when you have a lot of patience.cinematography is gorgeous. mostly the interior shots. lighting is almost rembrandt like. film could have used a bit of editing. some of the scenes and dialogue were just too long.it’s a bit of a mixed bag of a film.

In Chekhov the landed gentry are rich, isolated, lazy. They eat and drink, instruct the servants, talk a lot, their words and opinions valuable and important. How do we know this? Because they say so by their manner and outlook. But it’s a parlour game detached from reality. Monied property, not words, is the source of their social status and indolence. Meanwhile the source of their words is indolence. Logic, rhetoric and repartee are everything in the parlour game, the winner the best at debating and berating others.Chekhov is mentioned now because his spirit presides over this drama. It is set in the surreal terrain of Cappadocia in central Anatolia, a semi-arid upland region in modern Turkey. Landscapes of caves, fairy chimneys and lava tunnels were created by volcanic activity over the past three million years. The area has been inhabited since the 6th century B.C. and today attracts thousands of tourists, especially in the warmer months.Aydin runs a small pension. It is built into the rocks and thus a kind of grotto or cave. The film title of Winter Sleep suggests hibernation, which Aydin essentially does in winter. He doesn’t do anything per se. His employees serve and feed the guests, clean up after them, total the bar and table tabs, slide the credit cards through the slot that makes the register ring. Aydin is the master and owner. He needn’t do anything, so he doesn’t. That’s why other people exist.He’s rich of course, the hotel and several estates in the local area his properties — properties inherited from his deceased father. The pension is called Hotel Othello, and not by accident. Aydin worked in theatre for 25 years as an actor and director. He shares the imperious bearing of Othello, as well as his oratorical skills. He’s used to being centre stage, being listened to and applauded. He’s used to performing, and in this film we need to look carefully to see if he still is. He lords it over others for at least two reasons: (1) he’s the local lord in a sense, and (2) he likes being it. Authority is good because it demands and obtains obedience. Plus it delegates tasks, so one doesn’t have to do them oneself.So what exactly does Aydin do besides give orders? He writes. He’s often at his laptop computer writing a weekly column for the local paper. He writes from on high physically and philosophically. His hotel might be 800 metres up the mountain, the village located much farther down the valley. His topics are civics, morality, history, not essays on water pumps, grain or wild horses. But horses do run wild in the uplands of Anatolia. There is probably symbolism in this, horses with more freedom than human beings, or some human beings. The wide-open landscapes also seem allegorical. They are not confining like the houses and hotel cut into rock.Aydin is perhaps 50 now. He’s married to Nihal, a beautiful woman who is 30 at most. She was long an admirer of his. She looked up to him, even worshipped him. But that was then, some time before. Now he’s a fallen idol, her regard for him not what it was. Aydin’s sister Necla also lives with the couple. She’s been going through a messy divorce that has messed with her mind. She’s often morose, lethargic, complaining. She did the right thing, leaving him. She’s knows it rationally, as he’s an abusive alcoholic. But emotionally she’s lonely, missing the feel of him next to her. She makes a bad divorcee because marriage is what she loves. She wants to be with her man, not idle on her brother’s sofa watching him type his articles and wondering what the point of them is, and telling him so.These are the three principal characters. Information about them is initially scanty. We’re told little or nothing. It’s the characters themselves who will reveal themselves to us through their conversations. These are long, intricate, articulate and intelligent. All three persons are educated, so they can find the words to say what they want. But much of what is said will come through introspection, through self-revelation to better understand what is there (in the personal interior) to talk about. In a way the film is a journey, as many good stories are, one that incrementally reveals more about character as time passes. At first all seems well between them, the banter light and superficial, friendly. But darker truths will eventually rise to the surface in each of them, at which point they’ll be voiced, causing pain to the others.The conversations seem real, not canned. A script for the dialogue was written, but it doesn’t feel like it when watching. With so little physical action over a long film (more than three hours), words matter. Catching everything said feels important, because we know any crises will be emotional and existential, not physical when or if they come. All the stock conventions of bad and lazy filmmaking are missing, the usual blood, guns, car chases, sex, etc. Love depicted without sex? It’s possible? Yes. One of the reasons why imagination was invented.What else in classic Russian stories such as Chekhov’s happens? The class divide, of course: problems between the landed gentry and the peasants or serfs. In this case the peasants are poor Turkish tenants, some of whom are unemployed and cannot pay their rents. One family in particular is in arrears, several months behind with their rent. Aydin is detached from this predicament, unaware of it. He doesn’t collect the rents: his agents do. Recently the rent collectors went to the ramshackle house of Ismail, a petty criminal now single who has a 10-year-old boy named Ilyas. Ismail’s elderly mother lives there too and his brother Hamdi, the local village inman, often visits. The rent collectors took away the TV and fridge, and now granny is miserable without both. Ismail tried to prevent the repossession, attacked one of the agents. The police were called in and quelled the disturbance by beating up Ismail. Young Ilyas witnessed the event and didn’t like it. He knows the agents work for the lordly landlord who never talks to them. Ilyas hates what was done to his daddy and seeks revenge. He will get it by hurling a stone at Aydin’s vehicle while he (Aydin) and his assistant (Hidayet) drive along the road past the boy’s house. The stone hits its mark, cracking and partially splintering the passenger window next to Aydin. Hidayet stops the truck, runs from the vehicle, catches the boy as he is running toward a nearby river. In fact, the boy falls into the freezing water and later catches pneumonia (though luckily recovers). At any rate, bad blood now exists between Aydin and his tenants. How will this wound be healed, if it can?Winter is closing in. The mountains and valleys are white, the trees bare, the roads icy, the wind strong, the air frigid. You can see your breath when you breathe, and you can’t see anything from inside the truck without the windscreen wipers wiping. A white world, the fairy chimneys looking brittle and magical.The tourists have gone, the hotel virtually empty now. A few employees remain to serve the meals, tea and coffee, but this crew is skeleton. So it’s now, in winter, that cabin fever will intensify, along with tempers. It’s now that we see the worst in the three principal characters emerge, their selfishness and lack of empathy toward one another. What sort of closure is there? To speak of this would reveal too much. The final scenes are ambiguous anyway, not a surprise in a film crafted with great care and intelligence. It was the winner of the 2014 Palme d’Or, and not by accident, all hailing it a masterpiece.One scene lingered with me long after several others had faded. It took place in late summer or early autumn. We see two men who have roped a wild stallion. The horse is traumatised. It thrashes about in a small, shallow stream, crying to itself. The men pull hard, then harder on the ropes. The horse finally tires, is pulled onto the stream bank, collapses to its knees, its head touching the ground, its breath heavy and harsh, its heart beating rapidly. Something wild is now tamed, no longer free.These three people have escaped their former lives. They have come to live in the land of wild horses to reinvent themselves. But they are the same as that horse panting and crying on the stream bank — no longer free.

Un film che ribalta tutte le forme di costruzione narrativa: là dove c’è un protagonista, un antagonista, persone di contorno … qui il vero protagonista è un sasso lanciato violentemente contro un finestrino d’auto. Un sasso che è una promessa, un futuro, un cambiamento…tutti sono protagonisti in questo film e tutti hanno un punto/perno su cui girare e osservare la vita attorno. Il paesaggio, magnifico… è una gabbia, che non può nemmeno essere modificato , perchè le migliorie portano una povertà ancora più grande. Siamo in Anatolia e la miseria è voluta perchè è ricchezza, è turismo….Il proprietario del piccolo albergo ha fatto delle scelte che prendono in considerazione solo la sua ricchezza, ma a cui aggiunge , per soddisfare un desiderio intellettuale la scrittura di un libro che dura da una vita… la moglie sopperisce alla noia del vivere inventandosi un’associazione che la liberi dai sensi di colpa e la porti a distribuire ricchezza tra chi ne è rimasto escluso. Tutti si muovono assecondando un ruolo prestabilito come se davvero il protagonista vero fosse l’inverno, il luogo gelido a cui nessuno si può sottrarre….ma un sasso apre uno spiraglio, fa entrare in questo minuscolo abitacolo, che è l’auto ma anche la vita, aria di cambiamento. Questo sasso ci rimane attaccato al cuore, per tutto il film. Davvero meraviglioso (Paola)