English-language International Poster
Kış Uykusu (English title Winter Sleep) is a 2014 Turkish language film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which won the Palme d'Or at the 67th Cannes Film Festival. The film tells the story of Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a wealthy and educated former actor, who some years earlier left Istanbul to settle in Cappadocia with Nihal (Melisa Sozen), his much younger wife. The couple lead a relatively secluded life, managing a small hotel, where Aydin's intellectual but bitter sister often joins them as a guest. Nihal meanwhile is dissatisfied with her life and her relationship with Aydin, and tries to assert herself by doing charity work for the benefit of the impoverished locals, which causes conflict between herself and her cynical, elitist husband.
Tropes
- Adaptation Amalgamation: The film is based on works by Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- Awful Wedded Life: For Aydin and Nihal. She is much younger and he is a burnt-out actor who left Istanbul to bury himself in a remote Anatolian region.
- Crapsack World: For people around Aydin but not for himself. He is a well-off person in the world of poverty.
- Death Glare: The father of the boy who threw rocks at the car of Aydin breaking the window gives him the one when he comes to him to complain of the boy's behavior.
- Meaningful Name: For Aydin whose name means "an intellectual"
- The Reason You Suck: Aydin and Necla have several lengthy scenes which start relatively peacefully but at some point turn into exchanges of vicious accusations.
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Spiritual Successor: To both classical Russian literature and Antonioni, Bergman and Tarkovsky.
