"Lets make an old story to a film really slow that it becomes an art house film!"

When you see an overly acclaimed film, you are prejudiced. You start thinking it must be good or bad, according to the judgment of the people whom you are hearing from, and your judgment about the people who are talking about it. I heard Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun, 2008) was good from many different people. I wanted to know why.

Three Monkeys starts with a very slow-paced sequence of a car climbing up a road and vanishing in blankness. The background music is minimal. I was awestruck. This must be good, I said to myself. And as the director began narrating a story, I realized it was just the beginning that was awesome. But yes, the color tone was good; the pace is the kind of pace I generally appreciate. All that added value to the film.

When the film starts dealing with a circle of incidents that happen in a family of a chauffeur who decides to take the blame for a fatal accident caused by his master and goes to jail, it started sounding like a fairytale which said if you do wrong things, it triggers a loop that never ends or ends up really bad. And when the film starts talking of lust that happens between two people, it invariably tries to say that it was the woman's mistake. It goes to the extent of making you feel she is a disgraceful woman.

How does the director actually do that? The chauffeur had a younger son who died maybe years ago. This son is a symbol of family relations and values as far as I understand. There are sequences when the dead son appears as a surreal image in the film. Apparently he appears only to the other son and the dad and only when they realize the mother had slept with someone else. The mother seemed to have betrayed the family so she doesn't remember him at all, even if she must be the one who might have delivered him and brought him up.

We've had these kinds of story ideas since the time men started writing stories and women didn't. If you have nothing new to say, but reinforce the values and morals which have been questioned for centuries, why should you spend time and energy making such an expensive film? I don’t understand.

As to why the audience liked it so much, I feel they always appreciate the old wine in a new bottle. If we analyze the film/literature culture here in Kerala, we understand that the most appreciated artists here are the ones who try to bring a difference in form, not content. The form-content discussion is forever on, still.

Three Monkeys was directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan from Turkey. I wish the director had a better vision of women.

Gargi H
© FIPRESCI