‘Monkeys’ See and Do: Zeitgeist Picks up where New Yorker Films Left Off

My headline sounds a bit harsh, but there is some “good” news in last week’s “bad” news announcement. Stateside fans of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his latest film (one of my favorites from Cannes) Three Monkeys as the now defunct New Yorker Films has passed on the picture to film with subtitles specialists Zeitgeist Films. While no release date has been set with the announcement of this arrangement, I expect this to play sometime this summer with hoefully a good word-of-mouth campaign supporting its release.

I remember walking into the packed screening at Cannes last year and upon the first images thinking “this is Ceylan alright”. I was impressed by the marriage of visuals and the dramatic tone of the film writing in my review “matching emotional undercurrents with the threatening skyline, there are a number of sweeping melodramatic cues made palpable by each of the character’s desperations. Amusingly, it is a cellphone ring tone that offers the only moments of reprieve from the all the wrath the text embodies.” Read my full review here.