Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities...
It will test your concentration, resolve and butt cheeks to the limit but Winter Sleep will reward your staying power: a perfectly played, beautiful-looking, exquisitely nuanced picture. Would make a great, if gruelling, decaying-wedlock double bill with Gone Girl.
Ceylan paints an absorbing, compassionate portrait of people who are making a painful accommodation with each other, and with a world that rejected them long before they thought about rejecting it.
Winter Sleep demands patience, but if you last the course, you will soon understand why it so enraptured the Cannes jury.
Rich, beautiful, indulgent, frustrating.
Bleak but beautiful, this terrific chamber drama confirms Ceylan as one of world cinema’s leading lights. The bum-numbing length may intimidate, but there’s more than enough quality to offset it.
A pompous Anatolian hotelier comes down to earth in this compelling drama from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
A thoughtful film with rich digressions into character, but its running time of three hours and 16 minutes is hard to justify.
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Friday November 21, 2014, until Sunday November 30, 2014. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee from Friday December 5, 2014, until Thursday December 11, 2014. More info: www.dca.org.uk
RSS feed of Cinema reviews