Reseñas de la crítica

Here, to see, hear and speak no evil is not a moral precept, but rather a description of the lies and self-deception that characterise our response to wrongdoing. Neither this evasive policy nor its Confucian opposite brings any satisfaction to the troubled souls captured within Three Monkeys, a painfully incisive representation of human nature and its dark capabilities.

This is not only a film of slow reveals, but also one whose more dramatic moments happen off-screen. It's an internal drama propelled by external events, about the consequences of masking over mistakes: Three Monkeys is a kind of anti-thriller, whose opening shot masterfully sets both the tone and theme for what is to come.

What makes the film fascinating is its four central characters. Each one is locked within, hidden from the others, driven by private needs that all come together after the death in the forest. Ceylan films them in painterly widescreen compositions that impose a spectacular landscape, one of lowering clouds, indifferent skies and lonely vistas. In this world, their best companions are their desires.

Ceylan is quiet and deliberate, even if some of the material is volatile; the story involves adultery, violence, jealousy, rage and paranoia. Much of the action takes place offstage; the director is less interested in events than in their effects. Ceylan keeps the focus on internal struggle and the mood downbeat. Often it seems as if little is happening, but there's an intense buildup of feeling.

All of it unfolds in hushed tones underneath a livid green sky, almost as if the clouds had been bruised by the emotional brutality the characters inflict on one another. Mr. Ceylan, a photographer as well as a filmmaker, at times falls prey to the pathetic fallacy, letting rain and lightning and mocking bursts of sunshine do too much of the dramatic work.

The heavy mood of indolence and rage, calibrated with ellipses in action, is stifling—everyone seems to move in a queasy haze. The climactic landscape shot—storms brewing over a harbor streaked with tankers and a distant man in silhouette—is suggestive of broader, communal malaise, yet confirms the film as an exemplary but deadening exercise.

The rigour and intensity of Three Monkeys is invigorating - it is nourishing in a way few other films are. And the moments of metaphysical revelation, the arrival of ghosts, are stunning. But I couldn't help feeling that Three Monkeys was an over-egged pudding, a film trying to be too many things in too many styles and moreover poised on the edge of implausibility: a certain murderous act, and subsequent cover-up, are left rather conveniently unexplained.

...He [Ceylan] relies on less obvious tools than most filmmakers would: silence, close-ups, the subtle manipulation of colours, clever sound design and breathtaking composition. While favouring reality over fantasy, he still manages to lend his film, which is blessed with a crisp, autumnal palette of greens and yellows and browns, a vivid sense of the universal and the theatrical by setting it largely in one bold location over which we intermittently hear thunder crack and see lightning flicker.