Trama

A family suffers from a major communication breakdown during their struggle to get through their hardships.

Near the Bosporus, Eyüp and Hacer live in a modest flat with their son Ismail, in his twenties, who's doing poorly in his studies. Few words pass between them, and a past family tragedy brings sorrow daily. On a rainy night, Eyüp's boss Servet, a wealthy businessman who's entering politics, hits a pedestrian on a lonely road. He drives off and offers money to Eyüp if Eyüp will take the fall - probably a six-month sentence. Eyüp agrees, and while he's in prison, Ismail wants his mother to ask Servet for enough money to buy a car. Servet, in turn, desires Hacer. How can this play out?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

While driving late night on a lonely road, the wealthy politician Servet hits a person and flees from the crime scene. The hit-and-run driver calls his employee Eyüp, who lives in a simple house with his wife Hacer and their teenager son Ismail, and offers to continue to monthly pay his salary and a large amount in the end of the sentence to Eyüp to take the blame for the accident. Eyüp accepts the offer and goes to prison along less than a year. Meanwhile, Ismail, who is a reckless student, wants to use part of the money that Servet owes to his father to buy a car to work as a school driver. When the beautiful Hacer visits Servet to receive the money, he makes a pass at Hacer. One day, Ismail returns home before traveling to visit his father and he sees Servet leaving his house and he presses his mother. When Eyüp is released, Ismail drives his father home and he leans that Hacer had taken part of the money to buy the car. When Servet does not discount the amount from the payoff, Eyüp suspects that Hacer is an unfaithful wife in the beginning of a family tragedy.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ceylan focuses his camera on four characters, a couple and their son plus the husband's boss, showing how the family opts to stick together by playing blind, deaf and dumb to problems that should in all logic split them apart.

A family dislocated when small failings blow up into extravagant lies battles against the odds to stay together by covering up the truth... In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing Three Monkeys invalidate the truth of its existence?