Keswick Film Club - Winter Sleep

Synopsis

'A beast, a beauty, a castle in the snow. Winter Sleep, the new film from the Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan, has all the key components of a fairy-tale, but its magic blows through the film in whispering breaths, raising the hairs on your arms even as you barely notice the air's movement' - Robbie Collin, Telegraph.

Aydin (played to great reviews by Haruk Bilginer) is a former actor who now runs the hotel he inherited with his young wife Nihal and his divorced sister Necla. He also has his finger in the pie of many of the local villagers' lives, treating them like his own mini kingdom. But all is not well; at home, his life is an ongoing quiet battle with his wife; in the village, his treatment of his very poor tenants leaves them discontented.

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has had great success at Cannes in the past, winning prizes for 'Uzak' , 'Three Monkeys' and 'Once upon a time in Anatolia'. Now he has finally won the Palme D'Or with his latest film. His films always scrape away at the darker sides of human behaviour and usually involve stunning camerawork. Both of these continue here, where 'as in all Ceylan's films, the landscape plays such a key role it should have an agent' Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter; the village is built into mushroom-like caves of the Cappadocian Steppes, but his emphasis is on conversation this time, delving into the characters like a Chekov play. Covering topics as diverse as mushroom picking and the existence of evil, 'It proceeds to chew over them at length as the snow starts to fly and the fire gutters in the hearth' - Xan Brooks, Guardian. Ceylan is careful not to take sides in the arguments, portraying all the characters 'in their full complexity, complacency or contempt' - Richard Corliss, Time.

We tried really hard not to have this film because of its length, but it just looked so good we thought it had to come to Keswick. Put aside that extra hour to spend in the Alhambra, sit back and enjoy...