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Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

Prosecutor Nusret: Ignore Naci. He's just 

a handful of bees, as my mother would say. 

All noise and no action.

I have such a vivid memory of watching this film at the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2011 -- you know how some images imprint themselves onto your brain? It's not just a specific image out of this gorgeous stream of images that director Nuri Bilge Ceylan assembled here, either -- it's a flow of images, of cars moving down dirt roads across distant hills and fields in the night-time, with the screen and the audience I was watching the film with itself included in the memory. It was as if we'd all be lifted and transported to this place where we hovered over on the next hill over, watching this drama unfold in the distance. 

It was a magical experience, one of those "this is why we go to a movie theater" religion of cinema things, and that's why we're wishing the great Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan a happy birthday today. Go watch his movies! All of the ones I've seen since have had the same sort of magical transportative quality to them.