April 30, 2009: Three Monkeys
This was a very yellow movie. Obviously deliberately desaturated, it’s one of the things that sticks with me as I revisit it in my mind, although I don’t know how relevant that is. Three Monkeys is the story of a Turkish family, a husband and wife and their adult son, and how the family deals with the father taking the rap for an incident involving a prominent politician in return for a handsome payoff. The husband is away for a year in jail.
I was really struck with this film at the time, and it’s been useful to digest it for a while. I saw it with two friends, one of whom really liked it (as did I), and one of whom hated it. We all discussed it afterwards, and figured out some of the reasons why we might be so divided on this. Three of these are: 1) the motivation of the characters; 2) the style of fighting among characters; 3) the pacing.
The motivation of the characters may not have been clear, but this wasn’t really important to me. It seemed to me that the plot is about a series of events spinning out of control without any real avenue for the characters to change their paths, although they try to do so. I was happy for the movie to be about that, rather than being about the people in particular. The way things are brought around full circle at the end suggested exactly that to me – people learn the way things are done, and then do them that way, without necessarily a lot of consideration for whether that way makes sense. The cycle continues.
We’re all used to dramatic conventions with people yelling at each other for the purpose of exposition as well as for making scenes more “dramatic”. In Three Monkeys, this family, repressed by their culture and their difficult family history and their personalities, do a lot of quiet brooding and fighting in silence. This style hits home with me and actually seems more genuine since it’s something I understand, and I think the friend who didn’t like the movie felt the opposite way about this, as it didn’t ring true for him.
The pacing of the film is also fairly slow and deliberate, with the above-mentioned fights often chewing up a fair bit of screen time without a whole lot getting done. Again, this rings true for me as the way things can be in reality, though it’s an undeniable break from convention. I will certainly admit that the novelty factor of this break from conventional pacing was one of the things I liked, and the friend who didn’t like this film spends a lot of time watching similar films at festivals and finds it tiresome.
There was one scene with the film running in reverse showing a bead of sweat moving up someone’s body rather than down. We all agreed that the purpose of this was unknown, and it didn’t really seem to add anything other than pretentiousness, whether it was supposed to represent a reversal of time, or something like that. Another noteworthy point was that there was nudity in the film, which I found surprising for a Turkish/muslim effort. I don’t know whether that’s typical or whether it was controversial, so I may be missing an important statement and not know about it.
So, I would recommend this film, but not everyone would, and I might not even particularly like to sit through it too many times. Take from that what you will.
Deliberate art-house fare, be warned.
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