Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan makes films like icebergs. They're pristine, chilly and somewhat formidable. They travel slowly on deep-water currents all of their own. In style and feel, they could have been chipped into shape in the Antarctic. Yet his films speak so clearly about his own country and his own people they're unmistakably Turkish. You come away from his pictures feeling you have perhaps spent time there, but only in the parts you would never go on holidays.

Three Monkeys follows in the wake of his remarkable 2002 film Distant and the brooding 2006 film Climates. Both of those pictures were superb studies of isolation and crafted with Ceylan's very distinctive, immaculately composed photography. (He was a photographer before he became a filmmaker.) In those films, the male heroes were so taciturn, to get them to express their feelings would be like asking Sisyphus to roll a boulder all the way to the top of a hill. In Three Monkeys, Ceylan wants to open things out, spread the isolation around. The title and theme come from the three wise monkeys proverb, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Here, there are four characters, a family whose lives are ruined by a scheming, fat-faced politician. But it is only when the film delves deeper, when we really get to spend time with the family, do you wonder how screwed up they were in the first place.

Here, Ceylan has a beef with Turkey and the film plays as a secular call of despair. It's there in the opening scene, set on a dark, tunneling country road. A car approaches and stops by a body lying in the middle of the road. We can't see their faces, but they can tell the person is still alive. A woman warns the driver not to get out. Call the police she says. They take the number of a car in the ditch and drive off. After this, everybody is out for themselves in this film. Social responsibility is cast away for a deep-rooted selfishness.

This is never more evident in Servet (Ercan Kesal), a businessman turning politician. He comes skulking out of the shadows when the car passes. He's responsible for the accident and knows it will destroy his career. So he asks his driver Eyup (Yazuz Bingol) to own up. A year in prison in return for a cash sum. Eyup has one of those faces beloved of Ceylan: bristled and hung heavy with unspoken sadness. He does time and leaves behind his wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) and his depressed son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) who keeps failing a university exam. Hacer has eyes like dark pools and a face proud with strong bones. But she's crumbling inside. While Eyup serves time, she is seduced by Servet only for Ismail to walk in on them. He seethes silently but won't tell his father.

There is a great scene where Hacer goes to Servet to ask for the money. He's self-absorbed as usual, sweat, like a guilty conscience, trickling down his forehead. Her mobile rings but she can't find it in her bag. It's the most annoying ring – a pop song with lyrics that come later to haunt the film. And it fills up the screen with awkwardness. Ceylan did a similar thing in Climates, where, at a pivotal moment when a man wanted to tell his ex-partner how much he had changed, the film interrupted him with a bunch of noisy workmen. It's a typical Ceylan moment: his still, wide-screen compositions seem so studied, but life keeps interrupting.

The texture of Three Monkeys is lovely. A green hue like dark moss. Blood when it flows is a life-draining brown. Sometimes the picture plays so slowly, moss could be growing on it. But Ceylan is somebody you trust at this speed. Three Monkeys is a film you digest. It repeats in your thoughts after you've seen it. Much of it works in silence. Characters think their way through it. But you always know what they are feeling. Ceylan is so in tune with his characters, he can write inner thoughts large on screen. This director takes his cues from the Italian giant Antonioni who painted a world where human connection was impossible. Ceylan's characters, however, want desperately to speak but don't know how. So they numb themselves to life. Three Monkeys is not as convincing as Ceylan's earlier work. It has an austerity that borders on being anti-social, moments when you wonder if he is trying to isolate the viewer too. But it is hard not to be impressed by the potent charge of his imagery or his ability to drill down to unspoken human essentials. He works with clarity of focus that is spiritual, cool and clear.

Three Monkeys

(Nuri Bilge Ceylan): Yavuz Bingol, Hatice Aslan, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Ercan Kesal, Cafer Köse

Running time: 109 minutes (IFI?Club)

Rating: 3/5