Review: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Novelistic, But Dull 'Winter Sleep'

This is a reprint of our 2014 Cannes Film Festival review.

Impenetrably dense, extravagantly wordy, and very, very long, it's safe to say Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Winter Sleep,” before this afternoon’s Cannes screening the bookie’s favorite to take the Palme, won’t be winning him many new fans from the general public. And in its deliberate, almost mischievous delight in eschewing any kind of conventional narrative structure (one in which things occasionally happen), it may even lose him a few, especially among that number (this writer included) inclined to goodwill based on his last film, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” which, in its embrace of certain genre elements, felt like a breath of fresh air, and, strangely, a liberation from the occasionally stultifying vibe of his prior films. But judging by the ovation that followed, for the benefit of the film team who were in attendance as this press screening doubled as the film’s gala premiere (forcing VIP guests into the daft-looking...