# Three Monkeys (2008) Review: A Family Sworn to Silence > Three Monkeys is Nuri Bilge Ceylan's brooding Istanbul drama about a family that agrees to a lie to survive, and the silences that slowly poison its home. Canonical: https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/three-monkeys-2008-review/ Published: 2026-07-23 Last updated: 2026-09-24 Author: Kaiser Khan — Founder & Editor Language: English Review basis: direct-viewing Spoilers: none Rating: 3.5/5 ## Verdict Yes, for patient viewers. It is a visually striking, emotionally bruising moral drama, but its slow pace and cold mood make it demanding. ## Is Three Monkeys worth watching? **Yes, if you have patience for slow, sombre art cinema. Three Monkeys is a gripping, visually haunting study of a family unravelling under the weight of a lie, and it won Nuri Bilge Ceylan Best Director at Cannes.** Its storm-darkened images and taut performances create a mood of mounting dread. The reservation is that its bleakness and long silences can make it feel airless, and it is colder than Ceylan's best work. ## What is Three Monkeys about? [Three Monkeys](https://celluloidscore.com/movies/three-monkeys-2008/) begins with a late-night accident on a dark road. Servet (Ercan Kesal), a politician in the middle of an election campaign, cannot afford a scandal, so he asks his driver, Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl), to take the blame and serve the prison sentence in his place. In return, Eyüp will be paid and keep his job. Eyüp agrees, leaving his wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and teenage son İsmail (Ahmet Rıfat Şungar) to manage alone in their modest apartment by the railway line on the edge of Istanbul. As months pass, their need for money and their own restless dissatisfaction draw them into choices that deepen the original deception. The title refers to the proverbial monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil. Ceylan directs from a script co-written with Ebru Ceylan and Kesal. The film is Turkish, in Turkish, and runs 109 minutes. ## Storm clouds as a state of mind The first thing anyone notices about Three Monkeys is its look. Ceylan and cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki use digital photography with a heavily desaturated palette, heavy skies and sickly greens and browns, so that the world seems perpetually on the verge of a storm. The family's apartment, perched above the sea with trains rattling past, feels exposed and precarious. Ceylan's direction is patient and precise. He favours long, static takes, close-ups on faces that say very little, and landscapes that dwarf their characters. The sound design, with thunder, passing trains and ringing phones, does much of the storytelling. Dialogue is sparse, and the audience is left to read the tensions between characters in glances, pauses and physical distance. ## Performances built on what is not said The actors play the family's secrets with remarkable restraint. Hatice Aslan is outstanding as Hacer, a woman whose frustrations, desires and shame are visible only in fleeting expressions. Her performance is the emotional centre of the film, and she makes a morally compromised character achingly human. Yavuz Bingöl brings a brooding, simmering intensity to Eyüp, a man who suspects more than he wants to know, while Ahmet Rıfat Şungar captures İsmail's adolescent anger and drift. Ercan Kesal, who would go on to further collaborations with Ceylan, gives Servet a slippery, self-serving ordinariness that makes him more believable than a conventional villain. ## Where the gloom becomes oppressive Three Monkeys is a demanding film. Its pace is slow, its characters rarely communicate, and its relentless bleakness can feel suffocating rather than illuminating. The melodramatic plot, built around a single lie and its consequences, sits slightly uneasily with Ceylan's austere, contemplative style, and at times the film feels more like an exercise in mood than a fully realised drama. Compared with the richer, more humane Once Upon a Time in Anatolia or Winter Sleep, it can seem schematic. ## Who should watch Three Monkeys? This is for viewers who enjoy slow, contemplative art cinema and morally complex family [drama](https://celluloidscore.com/genres/drama/). It suits fans of Ceylan's work and anyone interested in Turkish cinema's festival tradition. It contains brief violence and adult themes, including infidelity, but nothing graphic. Expect a sombre, quiet film that rewards close attention rather than a conventional [thriller](https://celluloidscore.com/genres/thriller/). If it draws you in, these are the natural next steps: - [Once Upon a Time in Anatolia](https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/once-upon-a-time-in-anatolia-2011-review/), Ceylan's later masterpiece about a murder investigation and the men involved in it. - [Winter Sleep](https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/winter-sleep-2014-review/), his Palme d'Or winner, a longer and more talkative study of guilt, pride and family tension. ## The verdict Three Monkeys is a beautifully shot, emotionally bruising drama about a family trapped by its own silence. It is slow and oppressive, and not Ceylan's most accessible or richest film, but its atmosphere and Hatice Aslan's remarkable performance make it a rewarding watch for patient viewers. **Rating: 3.5/5** ## Related title - [Three Monkeys (2008)](https://celluloidscore.com/movies/three-monkeys-2008/) ## Editorial - [Editorial standards](https://celluloidscore.com/about/editorial-policy/) - [Report a correction](https://celluloidscore.com/about/corrections/)