However, "Three Monkeys" is a noir; this is the first genre film I have seen by Ceylan. While being a noir may gain some audience who might otherwise have not been interested in a Turkish arthouse, it suffers the usual cliches associated with film noir and distracts the film-maker and the audience from the greatest attributes of Ceylan, a true auteur: Ceylan had to put his originality of mood and perspective to the service of the genre.
That being said, a Ceylan is a Ceylan, and all the cliches in the world will not be able to drown out flickers of his invincible originality. Here, of the "See none - hear none - speak none" trinity, the key theme is Inarticulateness, mainly of the male characters. People are reduced to any form of communication but speech, the most obvious one in a civil society. Hence the men express themselves through sexual liason, through obfuscations in the face of law, or through physical violence that is as "unnatural" as the long spells of inertia.
The drowning of a child is not an explanation, as some suggested, but a speech inhibitor that further hampers articulateness.
View more about Three Monkeys reviews
