As for that last one, I cannot think of any other film which revisits so many film tropes, from neorealism to postmodern reflexivity is such a delicate yet confident manner. Every moment in this film is charged not just with humor but with purpose and feeling. Like many of Kiarostami's films it functions as autocritique and as a portrait of a village--this time not in crisis like the previous film, And Life Goes On....
I'm probably being too elliptical for people who haven't seen these films. I'll try to summarize as best I can soon (it's not easy). Those of you who might like copies of these, I think I can make them. Let me know. But again: if you haven't seen the films before, don't bother. One of Kiarostami's gifts is composition (he's also a landscape photographer) and these video CDs are like Cliffs Notes to the actual films' in terms of visual beauty--you get a sense of it but you don't really experience it.
Anyway, thoughts on Abbas Kiarostami? It's perhaps inevitable that since that Western critics have embraced him enthusiastically, he would be greeted by something of a backlash. And to my understanding he is a respected figure in Iran but his films are non grata--they are barely exhibited at all, and certainly have no commercial impact (just one of the many parallels between Kiarostami and Hou). He's a festival filmmaker now, and whether that status has influenced his work (aside from ABC Africa where it's obvious) is a big question. Perhaps it has emboldened him. But I managed to miss Ten when it came here (for just a week!) so I can't say for sure.
Thoughts?
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 01:42 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:23 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:24 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:26 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:28 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:32 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:34 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:36 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:40 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 02:41 (twenty years ago) link
Gabbah is really good too. It has lots of interesting imagry.
I want to watch more of the earlier (early 70s) Kiarostami films. Are any of them better than his more recent ones?
― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 03:34 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 04:47 (twenty years ago) link
― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 12:45 (twenty years ago) link
One of the reasons why I haven't, I think, is because I missed them all in the theatres for no good reason and can't bring myself to watch the p&s VHS versions.
― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 14:09 (twenty years ago) link
― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 16:06 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 16:12 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 16:17 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 16:51 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 16:52 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:12 (twenty years ago) link
― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:14 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:39 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:42 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
Speaking of which:
v. Freaky, almost Hobbesian possessive attitude towards women displayed by characters.
― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 17:57 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2003 18:07 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 17 May 2003 06:00 (twenty years ago) link
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?
― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 9 September 2003 04:30 (twenty years ago) link
make some more list threads, girolamo.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 10 September 2003 00:07 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 10 September 2003 03:00 (twenty years ago) link
― Girolamo Savonarola, Wednesday, 10 September 2003 06:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 10 September 2003 20:49 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, 11 September 2003 01:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 11 September 2003 01:41 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 17 September 2003 23:04 (twenty years ago) link
― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, 18 September 2003 01:36 (twenty years ago) link
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
― oscar, Wednesday, 18 July 2007 02:27 (sixteen years ago) link
Life and Nothing More is the most boring heap I have ever sat through. Bah.
― Stevie D, Friday, 20 July 2007 01:52 (sixteen years ago) link
well, you shd stay away from him, then.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 21 July 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― Foster Twelvetrees (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 5 July 2016 01:38 (seven years ago) link
Apologies, didn't see the other thread revive.
Still, what a loss.
― Foster Twelvetrees (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 5 July 2016 01:46 (seven years ago) link
totally unrelatedly, I had just downloaded Where Is The Friends Home in hopes of watching it tonight. RIP
― de l'asshole (flopson), Tuesday, 5 July 2016 01:53 (seven years ago) link