Three Monkeys

There are secrets within all families, and so the premise of Ceylan’s award-winning Turkish film has everything going for it: a family that opts to stay together speaking no evil, hearing no evil and seeing no evil. Hence the title.

However, families hardly go about it in the detached manner that Ceylan films the story. Three Monkeys moves at a languorous pace, studded with meaningful glances and even-more-meaningful pauses, and it’s hard to shake off the feeling that what we are seeing is more style than substance. It won him the best director award at Cannes 2008, and you can see why.

The story is essentially about four characters, Eyup (Bingol), wife Hacer (Aslan), son Ismail (Sungar) and Eyup’s boss Servet (Kesal). Servet is a budding politician and one night just before the elections, he runs over someone. Afraid of the political fallout, he convinces his driver Eyup to take the rap for him, promising him a lump sum when he gets out.

Eyup is jailed for nine months. While his family doesn’t lack of money, Hacer becomes increasingly lonely. On top of it she has on her hands a teenager son who has fallen into bad company. All this drives her to take a step that threatens to break the family.

While Aslan is convincing as guilt-ridden Hacer, unsure about what she should do next, the director fumbles badly with the denouement. The lack of dialogues may be a calculated move, but the film tries to make up with silences that scream threateningly loud about limited ideas on how to deal with the climax.

The men fare the poorest, swinging between extreme reactions and unclear passiveness. Hacer almost jumps off the terrace twice, and in one nice scene, after telling her to kill herself if she wants, Eyup pauses on his way out of the building, as if checking out the height.

However, we never understand why he does it — out of love, hatred or something in between. And that’s the failing of Three Monkeys. We fathom all of it, and yet almost none of it gets across.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com