Three Monkeys (Üç maymun - 2008)

This Turkish movie won Nuri Bilge Ceylan the Best Director prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Palme d'Or but we found it just a bit difficult to follow. In film school they taught us to throw out some of the exposition because our audience is smarter than we think. Maybe Jack & I aren't smart enough to follow the Turks, or, at least, this one. The story tended to jump ahead from time to time, and then there were (possible) fantasy sequences, leaving us scratching our heads and saying wait, what? Perhaps if we had seen this on the big screen in a theatre we would have concentrated better, but streamed from netflix onto the laptop, then hooked up to the TV, with pixillation in the dark scenes, and the cat wandering in and out (and then an interruption of 3 hours when we had to leave) was too much. The title comes from the monkeys who hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil; but the people in the movie all had their evil ways. The online reviews have mostly been good (78% at rottentomatoes, 7.4 on imdb) so I guess we were just too distracted to enjoy it. I imagine the cinematography would have been great on a proper DVD on in a proper theatre. Turkey has submitted this as its entry for Oscar for foreign film (I have no idea how many contenders there are). This played for one night at the university in the fall--one night when we were unavailable--and I had been wanting to see it ever since. I think you serious film lovers should see it and tell me what you think, please.