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(In Turkish, with English subtitles) This dreamy, dialogue-driven, slowly unfolding movie is quite simply astonishing.  Set in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, in the midst of winter, we meet Aydin, a man of the world, a former actor, now a writer, who in his retirement is living once again in the land of his upbringing – provincial Turkey. He owns a hotel that is built in one of the human-created caves of the region, a seemingly snug place, but one that is stark and cold in the harsh Cappadocian winter.  This could be a metaphor of Aydin himself or of his soul.  He seems kind and gentle, warm and approachable, but is he really?  His warm eyes also dart cold daggers at a local impoverished family for the piles of junk accumulating in the yard of the house they rent from him.  He sneers at the local imam’s mud-caked shoes, and snubs his wife’s guests, who have gathered to discuss ways to fight the poverty of the region.  With seemingly gentle words, he nevertheless berates his sister, who questions the deeper feelings behind his scathing columns written for a local publication.  In short, he finds himself drifting farther from his much younger wife, his sister, his community.  Shifting around issues of the nature of charity and of giving, the movie calls into question just what is it, this thing called love, whether that be love towards a wife, sister, or neighbor.  Is it affection towards and understanding  of our fellow humans, despite their flaws and weaknesses? Is it giving to alleviate hardship even if that giving may not end the harshness of life after all?  And yet, and yet, Aydin is only human and therefore so like all of us, so capable of human failings and flaws.  In the end, as Nuri Bilge Ceylan states in the New York Times, the movie is about everything and nothing; in short, it is about life.  Ceylan also directed Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Distant, Climates, and Three Monkeys, all four of which are owned by HCPL.

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