Winter Sleep is a first rate 2014 Turkish film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, (also directed 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia which I remember seeing and enjoying), loosely adapted from the Chekhov short story The Wife.
The film focuses on a handful of people: Aydin, a former actor who lives in Cappadocia (yes, you Turkish travelers, it’ll look quite familiar), runs a small hotel and also collects rents from some homes inherited from his father; his young wife Nihal who is struggling to provide some independence to her life; his sister Necla, a recent divorcee. suffering from terminal boredom and self pity; and Hamdi, Ismail, and Ilyas, members of a tenant family, respectively the village Iman, his older and unemployed brother, and Ismail’s 7 year old son. There are also a couple of friends, a school teacher, and Aydin’s business manager Hidayet.
The film is essentially a series of dialogues with Aydin a participant in most of them. Each identifies and then expands on the conflicts between him and each of the other main characters, with each exchange deepening in perception and nastiness, and each character, while speaking what we recognize as truth about the other, also twisting the knife.
Aydin is the wealthiest, or one of the wealthiest, people in the area. He writes columns for a small local paper, extolling virtue, principle, obligation to the environment, human kindness, and more — yet his human interactions, style and highhanded interventions reflect little of that. And of course, he has Hidayet do all his dirty work so he can claim ignorance and non-involvement.
The arc of the movie leads to some understanding on his part, along with much ambiguity as to whether, how much and with what impact things are actually likely to change.
The obvious echoes are Chekhovian; somehow it also reminded me of some of Bergman (huh?).
The movie is long — a bit over 3 hours, but worth if not every minute of it, let’s say all but maybe 10 minutes!
A fascinating movie if you appreciate smart dialogue, human insightfulness, and that wonderful Cappadocian landscape!