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Three Monkeys Movie Review

Three Monkeys is a 2008 Turkish drama film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and starring Yavuz Bingol and Hatice Aslan. It’s a solid, but flawed Ceylan feature.

When Servet, a rich businessman, accidentally kills a person, he pays his worker, Eyup, to take responsibility for the crime. However, his relationship with Eyup’s wife threatens everything. This is one of the earlier Nuri Bilge Ceylan movies and I was taken aback by how different his filmmaking style was back then to how it is now.

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And I am honestly not sure that this is for the better. I prefer his movies with excessive dialogue over this one with excessive silence. Although undeniably very well made and quite cinematic, the story here is so simple that the two-hour runtime wasn’t warranted for me. It seemed to me that he had material for just one hour or so and extended it to two hours in a rather forced manner.

Yavuz Bingol and Hatice Aslan both did a phenomenal job in their difficult, but well defined roles. The movie has a couple of more characters to deal with, but these two are the most important ones and they get the most screen time. The drama between them was meaty and well realized.

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Three Monkeys is gorgeously filmed, very well scored and having a soundtrack that fits its setting so well. The highlight is the movie’s somber tone and atmosphere that made every character moment and dialogue emotionally effective. The movie is at its best when showcasing how easily a family can crumble when lies and crime are introduced to the lives of the people involved. I just wished that we had more of the signature Ceylan dialogue to enjoy.