Review of 'Three Monkeys'

Since I allow a certain minority of my posts to focus on film, I am going to discuss one which I recently had the pleasure of viewing.

I first heard about Three Monkeys, an acclaimed 2008 Turkish film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, from my boss, a traveller to Turkey who had read about it in a cinema magazine and who craved to see it because of her experiences in that country. There are so many layers and themes to this film that I shall not attempt to offer a comprehensive analysis, but I shall flesh out some of the themes which impressed me most.

To summarise the film succintly and without disclosing the ending, a wealthy politician, Servet, accidentally kills a pedestrian with his car and convinces his driver, Eyüp, to go to prison on his behalf in exchange for a lump sum of money as well as a continued salary as his driver after his release. Meanwhile, Hacer, Eyüp's wife, urges her son, İsmail, to seek employment for the summer, but when he suggests driving children back and forth between school, they realise they do not have the money to invest in such employment. İsmail suggests that Hacer should request an advance allotment of Servet's promised sum with which to buy the car, and, after Hacer makes the request, Servet drives her home, where İsmail discovers them having sex through the keyhole of the doorknob. İsmail confronts his mother and, when she denies having sex with Servet, with whom she has fallen in love, smacks her across the face several times in sudden, heated disgust; upon his release, Eyüp returns home and, eventually suspecting Hacer's affair, boorishly manhandles her in bed and uses intimidation to break her down into tears of confession. A later revelation suddenly implicates her son in a criminal act, and the above events soon become resolved into a bittersweet, uncertain finale.

When I first left the theatre, I gathered that Servet had promised Hacer the advance sum on the condition that Hacer should have sex with him. I still suspect this is the case, because at one critical point in the film, Servet tells Eyüp upon the latter's release that he should feel he deserves the entire sum (even though Servet advanced a portion of it secretly to Hacer), stating that his family has surely paid enough for it. Eyüp gives a quizzical look at this comment. Now, this made me wonder whether Servet was coyly suggesting his condition on Hacer's request without actually revealing it, graciously allowing Eyüp the full sum after his release from prison, as expected. If such is the case, perhaps the most tragic experience in the film is that of Hacer. (1) She must prostitute herself to the family's sponsor in order to gain her son employment and invest in the family income, (2) her son assaults her for doing so, even though it is to fulfil his own request, (3) her husband bullies her for doing so, even though he himself has lied to protect a killer, gone to prison, and risked his family's reputation and his own employability in exchange for the very same thing--money--(4) her seductor--the family's sponsor--abandons her just as she has fallen in love with him out of loneliness and unhappiness with her own life, and, finally, (5) her own son commits a criminal act (which I leave unstated) just as reprehensible if not worse than having sex for money.

In a sort of paradox, Hacer can please those around her only by displeasing them; the men in her life place certain expectations on her only to punish her when she violates them in order to fulfil other expectations which they have placed on her. She is stretched in opposite directions by different characters with conflicting demands which she cannot fulfil without contradiction. The film reveals the irrational and unfair expectations placed on women like Hacer in a patriarchal society as well as the infuriating hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the fathers, sons, and money-makers who often commit more abysmal acts themselves--such as murder--in order to obtain the same ends. It is impossible to communicate the thrust of this observation unless the reader has watched the film in its entirety.

A noteworthy observation about Three Monkeys is that it is a film created by Turks who recognise the lamentable situation of people like Hacer. Essentially, the provenance of the film shows the self-critical attitude of the filmmakers, who are aware of the corruption and social injustice which grips their own society and who candidly--and with provocative cinematic grace--expose these problems for the rest of the world to see.