Audio By Carbonatix
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the auteur behind Three Monkeys,
didn’t win the best-director bauble at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
for his hyperkinetic visuals and mastery of the smash cut. On his
latest, he tends to set his camera in place and allow it to stare
pitilessly at his subjects for long stretches; one cliffside sequence
runs for almost three minutes without a single pan or edit. The
storyline, which is set into motion when a politician (Ercan Kesal)
pays his driver (Yavuz Bingol) to take the fall for vehicular homicide,
touches on adultery, pederasty and assorted elements that might have
turned pulpy in other hands. Instead, Bilge Ceylan imbues them with
seriousness of purpose that can be riveting at times — e.g., one
of the most menacing and disturbing bedroom scenes in recent cinema.
But repeated scenes of characters stricken dumb by guilt, ennui or some
combination thereof are as apt to produce torpor as existential dread.
That’s yet another form of evil about which these characters don’t
speak.
Three Monkeys does business at 4:30 and 7:15 p.m. on Friday,
May 29 at the Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli. Additional screenings are
scheduled through June 4; tickets range from $6 to $9.50. Learn more at
303-595-3456 or www.denverfilm.org.
