Room and a Half

2009 Director Andrei Khrzhanovsky

This touching and amusing movie is a biography, both imaginative and imaginary, of Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), the self-taught poet, critic and translator, raised in Leningrad, the son of a Soviet naval photographer, and persecuted by the state for his independence of mind.

In 1972 he was driven into American exile where he achieved intellectual eminence, and he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987.

Brodsky never returned to Russia and apparently once said that "such a journey could only take place anonymously". Khrzhanovsky takes Brodsky on a journey back to Leningrad, dreaming about his youth, upbringing and early life as he takes the ferry from Helsinki to Leningrad before being reunited with his elderly parents.

The director uses animated sequences to elegant effect, and his affectionate, nostalgic movie brings to mind the autobiographical works of those other exiles, Vladimir Nabokov and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Three Monkeys

2008 Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan

At the beginning, Three Monkeys looks more like a slow-burning thriller than anything else. Servet  is a middle-aged politician who accidentally kills a pedestrian in his car, at night, on a remote country road. Panicking and fearing scandal with an election imminent, he flees the scene and later desperately persuades his long-standing driver to take the rap. Servet promises to keep paying his salary into his bank account while he endures the short spell in prison and to pay a lump sum in cash on release. Deeply troubled, but utterly dependent on his employer's goodwill, the driver agrees, and the swallowed humiliation of this shabby deal worsens the already troubled family environment he leaves behind. His wife is a beautiful woman, though hardened and careworn by money worries, and by a family tragedy yet to be disclosed to the audience; his son is a young man in his early 20s who is worrying his parents by flunking out at college and getting in with a rough crowd.

There are aspects of Three Monkeys that look very much like Ceylan's earlier films: he creates wonderful, painterly, yet unsentimental visions of the Istanbul waterfront, and the cinematography and colour-palette this time have a mannered, desaturated look. The passing of the summer and the imminent arrival of winter are important, and there are some domestic images that are something of a motif for this director: people sitting around watching television.

The humble family flat at the beginning of the film is to be the venue for a clever "reveal" from Ceylan, which I suspect other directors may wish to pinch: The wife is asleep on the couch late at night with the TV on; the son, who had promised to be home long before this, creeps in very quietly so as not to wake her and, in shadow, goes to his room. She awakes and is baffled by a drop of blood on the floor; she pulls open her son's bedroom door and she - and we - are shocked to learn that his secret is not merely that he is a dirty stopout; he has been very badly beaten up. It is only now that Ceylan shows us her face in closeup, and we see how beautiful, and how troubled, she is. It is a quietly stylish film-making coup.

The rigour and intensity of Three Monkeys is invigorating - it is nourishing in a way few other films are. And the moments of metaphysical revelation, the arrival of ghosts, are stunning. But I couldn't help feeling that Three Monkeys was an over-egged pudding, a film trying to be too many things in too many styles and moreover poised on the edge of implausibility: a certain murderous act, and subsequent cover-up, are left rather conveniently unexplained. Ceylan has certainly produced an ambitious movie. But this kind of intensely worked drama is a creative cul-de-sac.

The Sun in a Net

1962 Director Stefan Uher

Fuelled by a quirky jazz jive and recorder motif soundtrack, world class cinematography and a few interesting stylistic choices, 'The Sun in a Net' makes for intricate, sensual entertainment.

A film like no other, its soundtrack constantly overlaps narration, dialogue and (sometimes jarringly annoying) music while its camera seems distracted from them all. It's like when you're surrounded in a busy city but you can't remember where you're going; none of the numerous distractions actually guide you but they greatly inform the atmosphere.

In the same respect, the entire film blends two distinct styles into one - there's the 'Mean Streets' independent approach with all its actual cityscapes and cramped apartments housing its minimal worldview, but then there's also a level of arthouse aspirations as cameras pan up to empty skies, glide around mirrors and frame its cast with incredible awe.

There isn't much of a plot to speak of and reiterating the brief threads that hold the story together would miss the point - this is thematic. It's a film of ideas - loss, hope, yearning, sexuality, political challenges, dreams, family and more - and it hits its targets by mixing the ordinary and the extraordinary into something unique. 

'The Sun in a Net' is one of those rare films that is what you, the viewer, make it. If you're looking to sit down and be drip-fed entertainment and a story, you'll find its net to be empty. Other viewers may just catch the sun.