The films of Abbas Kiarostami.

i. the scene where the director huddles round the kids, asking them about 'co-operation', when he asks them how far they've travelled and they squall with indefinable excitement/exclamation, "9 kilometres" is brilliant.

ii. Shakespeare syndrome, sorta. You get this feeling when reading Shakey, niggling 'did he invent this trope or is he co-opting it, redefining it?' - which when, I felt, when I watched this film I got a lot in the sense well I was thinking "oh, this is ho-hum this film but, my God it's Iranian - I can imagine that some of the things that come out of his movies [the postmodern reflexivity?! - postmodern is, as Kogan says, ethnocentric and presupposes a tradition of modernism - where does Kiarostami's modernism come from] would actually be quite subtly subversive in an Iranian context.

iii. scene with car driving through dirt-track road, wing-mirror in shot, essentially dovetailing your attention between the two 'scenes' is beautiful and beguiling.

iv. Truly post-modern? OK OK I go on (and on) about "referencing narratives outside yourself" rather uninterestingly and ill-definedly but the only TRUE example of this I have ever seen of this phenomena, now that I come to THINK about it, think about how the references I've normally taken as ref-externals are every much a bit of the main narrative as the main narrative is, ie they are HEMMED in, thus pt of the blah blah... any way the only TRUE moment is in Japon when the drunk cast member starts raving about soundman and how the people from the film don't pay them enough, then he's told to shhhh...

Sorry Amateurist, this is all very unhelpful, uninteresting, and dull. Short answer: it is beautiful, he doesn't hold the shots too long in that interminable style Herzog does (the descent scene in Aguirre, and pretty much all of Kaspar Hauser) and the characters are amicable... Beautiful... see coulda done it in a word.

As for Kiarostami's modernism be careful not to patronize him. Kiarostami comes out of a pretty intellectual family and is as literate as you or I (probably more so) in Western books and music and movies. His early films, pre-Revolution, use Western pop songs. Both And Life Goes On and Olive Trees use Vivaldi. And Kiarostami has mentioned both Andre Bazin and The Godfather in interviews. He travels to Europe and elsewhere constantly and has had many exchanges with French cinephiles and phil. Not to mention that Persia has a long tradition of interchange with the West, which recent years (post-1979) may obscure. It won't do to suggest that he is a more "Western" director than others in Iran, although clearly he knows or has learned much about pitching his films to a Western audience. Better to say that he is a cosmopolitan director, who addresses himself to people in decidedly uncosmopolitan parts of Iran. That is indeed a major theme in many of his films, not to say all of them.

Speaking of which:

v. Freaky, almost Hobbesian possessive attitude towards women displayed by characters.

Yeah the women thing can be alarming. There's that beautiful appeal by the suitor which I've never known how to take: "I don't want you for your money, or your beauty. I just want you to have a place in the world." Kiarostami's subsequent films have shown him to be sensitive to the restrictions facing women in Iran, so his distance from this issue--his unwillingness to confront it--in these films can be seen as part and parcel of the attitude he strikes toward the village in general: inquisitive, never presumptuous.

Sold out.

I still haven't made up my mind if it's up the the standards of either Taste of Cherry or The Wind Will Carry Us, but its feminism is not to be ignored.

And while this obviously is meaningless to a certain degree, it's so goddamn obvious how badly Kiarostami has been positioning himself as of late that he really, really, really, really wants to be Jean-Luc Godard. The way he dresses, the way he shaves, the sunglasses he wears, the way he talks about his films, the way he regards himself as an artistE. My friend met him last year and said he was a complete twat. Beside the point, maybe, but I guess I just want to turn the knife a few times before I withdraw the blade.

I'm still open to seeing more of his films, but if the others would rather pull Godard/Bresson tricks for shits and giggles, I'm out.

Should I just go to the Makhmalbafs instead?

make some more list threads, girolamo.

Alright, I'll get you the second one, to which I'd respond: so what? But what the hell does the "homo" thing refer to?

Beside the point, maybe, but I guess I just want to turn the knife a few times before I withdraw the blade.

That was actually not Kiarostami you dug a knife into but rather a bag of old arguments which, upon being spilled open, you are now knee deep in.

Seriously, though, stop getting hung up on "homo pomo", as un-PC as it may be (love to the gay people, yo!). It's just an old rhyming term that my friend and I use whenever postmodernism tries to be too clever or too meta to the point of it's own bloviating stupidity. Kiarostami may indeed be a genius, his meta-ending may indeed be something new and different within Iran, but I judge it to be (by the h-p standards subjective as they are) homo pomo in extremis.

Whoa.

A Retro in Berkeley, can't wait. A few weeks ago I was telling my friend that after watching Apu by Satyajit Ray I simply had no desire to watch films for a while. Last week, thinking of other directors in the same vein as Ray I said thinking aloud "I bet Kiarostami has some films like that". Yesterday I found this quote:

"When Satyajit Ray passed on, I was very depressed. But after seeing Kiarostami's films, I thanked God for giving us just the right person to take his place."—Akira Kurosawa

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/abbas_kiarostami

Life and Nothing More is the most boring heap I have ever sat through. Bah.

well, you shd stay away from him, then.

RIP:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/04/abbas-kiarostami-palme-dor-winning-iranian-film-maker-dies

"Cinema begins with D.W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami." - Jean-Luc Godard

Apologies, didn't see the other thread revive.

Still, what a loss.

totally unrelatedly, I had just downloaded Where Is The Friends Home in hopes of watching it tonight. RIP