Three Monkeys wastes no time in setting up a clear story world and a conflict to fuel it. A politician runs over somebody with his car and asks his driver to take the blame, and the prison time, in exchange for a sum of money when he’ll be out. While behind bars, the driver’s wife begins an affair with the politician. Their young adult son discovers it. It’s a known fact that Ceylan is a big Chekov fan.

The rest is told in subtext. Ceylan is a master of the untold. Of the implied. He shows us the characters’ transfigured faces, the time in between their actions, offering a new and spectacular kind of cinematic tension. The brief slips into surrealism are his signature: the ghostly apparitions of the family dead second son are magical.