Butler's Cinema Scene

Yilmaz Erdogan and Firat Tanis in "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"

“ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA” My rating: A- (Opening April 6 at the Tivoli)

153 minutes | No MPAA rating

I cannot begin to explain how “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” does what it does.

That’s part of its greatness, the way in which it slowly worms its way into our consciousness and blossoms, not in big melodramatic moments but in little ripples of thought and suppressed emotion that create a mood unlike just about any film I can recall.

After a brief prologue that shows three men drinking in what appears to be a run-down car repair shop, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s unforgettable drama begins at night in the rolling hills outside a medium-sized Turkish city.  In a wide shot we see three pairs of headlights in the distance. They finally pull to a stop and men get out, some in uniforms, some carrying shovels, a couple in handcuffs.

We soon surmise that this is a police investigation. Two men have been charged with murdering a third; this expedition was organized to find the body.

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“IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY” My rating: B (Opens March 30 at the Screenland Crown Center)

128 minutes | MPAA rating: R 

There’ s nary a girly moment in “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Anjelina Jolie’s hair-raising, heartbreaking love story set amid the horrors of the Bosnian war.

In fact, Jolie’s name doesn’t appear until the end of the film…almost as if she’s hoping we’ll discover the movie without knowing that it was made by one of the world’s most famous and

desirable women.

This gruelling effort follows the parallel lives of Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serbian police officer, and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Muslim artist. In the film’s early moments the two enjoy a night out dancing at a Sarajevo nightclub. The revelries end when a bomb goes off near them. The war is officially underway.

With Sarajevo under siege by rampaging Serb forces, Ajla hunkers down in an apartment with her mother, sister and infant nephew. One day truckloads of Serbian soldiers pull up and order everyone out of the building. The Muslim men are summarily shot. The women, at least the attractive ones, are carted off to a barracks where they work as cooks, seamstresses, waitresses and prostitutes for Serbian soldiers. Rape and beatings are a daily occurence.

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“THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD” My rating: B (Opening March 30 at the Tivoli)

109 minutes | No MPAA rating

Though he has grown up in a dirt-poor rural community in Albania,  Nik (Tristan Halilaj) isn’t all that different from teenage boys anywhere else. He’s a modern adolescent, one who obsesses over his favor sports teams, dreams of opening an internet cafe, texts his friends and ponders the mystery of girls.

But while his eyes may be set on the future, Nik must contend with a present that is very much rooted in a barbaric past.

In “The Forgiveness of Blood” this youngster finds himself caught up in a Hatfields-and-McCoys feud that could very easily end his life before it really gets started.

Early in Joshua Marston’s film, Nik’s father and uncle get into a fight with a neighbor over access to a private road. The confrontation leaves the neighbor dead, the uncle in jail and the father in hiding.

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Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha

“IN DARKNESS”  My rating: B+ (Opens March 23 at the Tivoli)

145 minutes | MPAA: R

I’m not going to tell you that the Poles have gotten a bad rap when it comes to complicity in the Haulocaust. All the evidence suggests that they were a fiercely anti-Semitic culture to begin with and that the Nazi occupation simply gave those long-simmering hatreds an official outlet.

And yet there were thousands of individual Poles who defied the authorities and their fellow citizens and provided shelter and comfort to their Jewish neighbors.

Leopold Socha was one such individual. But don’t call him a hero. Not yet. Not until you’ve seen “In Darkness,” the latest (and, you could argue, the best) film from Polish director Agnieska Holland.

Holland has done just about everything a director can do, from quality TV (“The Wire,”  “Treme”) to adaptations of classics (“Washington Square,” “The Secret Garden”). But she has often turned to the question of her country’s complicity in Hitler’s “final solution.”

“Angry Harvest” (1985) and “Europa Europa” (1990) both were set in World War II and centered on Jewish characters.

But nothing she’s done has been as powerful as “In Darkness.” Continue Reading »