jigen wrote: Wed May 06, 2020 1:01 pm
I'm still struggling with
Through the Olive Trees, though. There's so much in the film that I admire, but I was troubled by the young suitor's behaviour, which starts out pushy and annoying and becomes - to my eyes, at least - very unpleasant, entitled and a little frightening. The young man himself seems to suspect that the girl is ignoring him because her family disapproves, but I'm not sure we have any reason to believe that. The sequence near the end where he follows her for several minutes begging and haranguing her made me quite uncomfortable, and it seems to me that in the (visually breathtaking) final scene she finally gives in and agrees to marry him (I've seen this ending described as "ambiguous", but the music and the young man's run make me think she said yes). This didn't sit right with me. I rewatched the film to understand it a little better, but I came away with the same feeling.
But I also think I might be looking through the wrong end of the telescope here. Maybe I've missed something. I've seen a number of Kiarostami's films, and he strikes me as a highly sensitive filmmaker, and many critics I admire hold this film in high esteem, so I wonder if they read this character differently. It seems this film is quite well-liked on this board, so I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this character/relationship.
It's my understanding that Kiarostami couldn't show dialogue between Hossein and Tahereh due to the guidelines set down by Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on what behaviour between members of the opposite sex could be depicted on screen. This does have the effect of making Hossein's behaviour seem irrational, if not a little obsessional, but it does give us the beautiful ambiguity of the ending. I've also read an
interesting review from an Islamic viewpoint that compares "Tahereh’s non-responsiveness to Hossein’s entreaties to the perceived non-responsiveness of God to our prayers", which I'm not entirely convinced by but does give some food for thought.
--
I
love these films.
Where Is The Friend's House? is a film with a plot that - on the face of it - is as simple as its title.
Eight-year-old Ahmed accidentally takes his classmate's notebook home with him. He knows that if his friend doesn't do his homework, due the next day, in that notebook then he will be expelled from the school by their teacher who seems to be more focused on order and discipline than the work itself. With minimal information to go on, Ahmed feels compelled to return the notebook to his friend before it's too late.
It feels like none of the adults around Ahmed, principally his mother, agree with the necessity to embark on this quest. More specifically, it feels like none of the adults are even listening to what he has to say. There's a remarkable scene where Ahmed is explaining his quandary to his mother and there's essentially a tennis match of repetition, a look of confusion on Ahmed's face as we're almost able to hear the wheels of his mind turning, trying to process whether to obey his mother (the right thing) or return the notebook (another right thing).
Kiarostami's gift as a humanist filmmaker shows through how seriously the film treats these simple dilemmas of childhood and the turmoil one can feel when making one morally right decision at the expense of another that is also morally right according to one's moral compass.
The film focuses us on location - where? The film is set in Koker and nearby Poshteh, close enough that Ahmed can dash between the two. This region was devastated by the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake that resulted in over 35,000 dead, 60,000 injured and 105,000 displaced - using the more conservative estimates.
Hence, Kiarostami returned to Koker to check up on the stars of his film and then dramatised his own trip in
And Life Goes On.... In the film, the director of Where Is The Friend's Home takes his young son on a journey to Koker. On that journey, we hear from locals who describe to us the earthquake and the loss that they have experienced. In perhaps the film's most pivotal sequence of scenes, we hear from a young newlywed who talks to the director about getting married the day after the quake as the director's young son talks to a mother, in a matter-of-factly manner that only a child would, who has lost her daughter in the quake. "At least she won't have to do homework", says the child. To our surprise, the mother doesn't react badly to this comment. [It's worth watching Homework, included as an extra in the set, to contextualise the references to homework that appear in each film in this trilogy.]
The power of the film comes from the indomitable spirit of the people we encounter. A wedding. An antenna being set up for the World Cup game. Kids playing in the camp. And life goes on, indeed.
The young newlyweds of And Life Goes On... become the focus of
Through the Olive Trees, as Kiarostami adds another layer of meta-fiction to what would consequently be labelled as his Koker Trilogy. In Through the Olive Trees, the young newlyweds are not newlyweds at all but actors playing newlyweds for the director of the film that would become And Life Goes On... (or the film that would become Through the Olive Trees? Or both? Kiarostami deliberately muddies these waters). The actor playing the groom, Hossein Rezai, does desire to marry the girl, Tahereh, in reality, but she continually rejects his advances or, rather, stays silent in the face of them as her grandmother rejects them. Tahereh seems to come from a higher social class than Hossein, but he seems to think that the earthquake has levelled this class divide; in one of the film's most memorable scenes, he rejects the idea of marrying another girl for the same reason that Tahereh is seemingly rejecting him, the hypocrisy of which is pointed out to Hossein by the amused director of the film-within-a-film.
Kiarostami's self-reflexive trilogy starts off simple but becomes increasingly complex as he builds up the friction between the layers of fiction and reality that he constructs. Where Is The Friend's House? becomes Where Was The Friend's House - is it still there? Does it matter where the friend's house is? Where is the friend? Who is the friend?
Criterion provides a strong selection of extras, led by a newly restored
Homework - a documentary that Kiarostami made between Where Is The Friend's House and Close-Up. In it, Kiarostami interviews children at a school on their thoughts on the titular subject - nearly all of whom are effusive in their praise. The camera cuts between the child and a shot of (what seems like but can't be) itself - the camera acting as a filter between reality and what is being played out for the camera, what it is thought the audience want to see/hear, much like the Koker Trilogy. The film also has wider thoughts about the Iranian education system - we see a playground of primary school aged children vocalising their thoughts on Saddam Hussein, amongst other topics - and parenting, as the kids tell us about the help (or otherwise) that their parents provide them with their homework. Some of what they tell us certainly sounds like what would be child abuse in the here and now.
Presumably/hopefully we will see the other newly restored films that Kiarostami made for Kanoon early in his career appear on a set of their own; a few have already been included as extras on other Criterion Kiarostami releases. Potemkine in France have just released a collection.
