Winter Sleep

Quiet day with the HU song at Flashdog Studios followed by a swim at Freyberg pool, leaving in just enough time to whizz into town to catch an award winning movie at the Paramount Cinema. And what  movie I caught. With only two other visitors I watched a most spectacular Chekov drama unfold in the Cappadoccian mountains in winter. Tukish director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, obviously the next Ingmar Bergman, directed this fabulous modern drama which won the Palme D'or at Cannes in 2014 and lots of other awards. 

It is the story of of a retired Turkish actor, married to a much younger woman whose love he has well and truly lost, living in an inherited hotel in the snow covered hills in Anatolia. They have few guests during the winter, and the Master of the House has little to do. With the backdrop inside the cave-like home, the film is a magnificent study of male hubris coupled with female disenfranchisement in modern Turkey, but it is above all a sublime drama worthy of Chekov, as the chilly, complex stripping of all pretence unfolds. Its ending, not to be disclosed, is perfectly written with a voice-over expressing all that the chauvinist male couldn't say.

 Marvellously acted by a stellar cast unknown to us in the West, this is a real Five Star movie.

Great cinematography

Excellent acting...