Saturday, October 24, 2009
Abbas Kiarostami in Chicago:
A Kiarostami film will play on a big screen in Chicago for the first time since 2002, and I can think of nothing more important happening this weekend. I had hoped to have a decent length post up by now pontificating on the state of Kiarostami's reputation, as well as the factors that have led to its decline. Like some who believe that Orson Welles was a failed Hollywood director, as opposed to a successful independent director, there are some who treat Kiarostami as a failed narrative filmmaker, as opposed to a successful experimental filmmaker. His newest film, Shirin, plays as part of a double bill with his last 'commercial' feature, Ten at The Gene Siskel Film Center. David Bordwell has some nice things to say about Kiarostami and Shirin here, and my good friend Ben Sachs has got an intelligent appreciation over at the CINE-FILE. Kudos also to the Chicago Reader for giving a surprising amount of space to Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa's conversation on Shirin. One might consider it a brief addendum to the book length study of Kiarostami that they co-authored 2003, which remains, to the best of my knowledge, the only one of its kind in English. So go and see Shirin this weekend, and then come back here so we can talk about it.
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2 comments:
I wanted to start with something simple in the hopes of building something a little bigger. Internet conversation has always seemed a tricky beast to me. In any case, the first thing that struck me about Shirin was the pacing. Going in, I was anticipating something at least structurally similar to Ten or Five: A series of static images/longer takes designed to be explored and contemplated. It seemed to me that I was being led through a carefully constructed process whereby the effect doesn't reside in stillness (whatever that might entail in this context) but in rhythms and subtle repetitions. I found myself disconnected with the soundtrack (obviously as it is so consciously disembodied...) but deeply invested in these Women and their investment in what they're watching. Certain things would occur over the soundtrack and I'd find myself wondering how certain faces would react to what I was hearing... Some of it sounded quite violent... It could almost be described as Kiarostami's attempt at an action movie...
Thanks for stopping by Jake, and I'm interested very much in how some of your ideas mirror my own, although perhaps in not totally congruent ways. I agree that the pacing was not quite what I expected, even though I had no idea what to expect. Yes, Ten and Five have set up certain expectations, but after just a few minutes of Shirin, I was totally absorbed by these new rhythms. I'm not sure if repetition is the key here, although obviously we see the same faces more than a few times. Perhaps I took it as a kind of character building in the traditional sense, or in other words, Kiarostami approximating what might be considered traditional character building (first you see them smile, then cry, then excited, etc). Also, I would only partially agree with you that I was disconnected with the soundtrack. Clearly it is designed as a kind of dialectic with the faces, a kind of fiction versus reality (although even that isn't entirely true, since he shot each performance separately, in his own living room). So I guess I'm reacting to a kind of presumed visual schema - the actual versus the virtual. Nevetheless, I found myself fading in and out of each dynamic, first being fascinated by faces and gestures, then refocusing my attention on the soundtrack and the narrative that it was relaying. That we are allowed the time and space to indulge in either preference is, I think, entirely part of Kiarostami's experiment. Yes, much of that soundtrack sounded incredibly violent, with a ridiculously active dolby surround! Curiously, I found the entire experiment to be perverse - what this audience is viewing (and what we are watching them watch, as well as listening to), sounds like the most conventional narrative you could possibly encounter. A parable of forbidden love, lost and then found, then kept apart, then tragically ended; epic battles, mistaken identities, evil queens, etc. It's a Disney fairytale. But as much as we might want to see what is on that virtual screen, as much as those sound effects make us want to witness an epic battle (Red Cliff anyone?), Kiarostami demands that we focus only on the human effect of that process. Strangely enough, I think you could suggest Kiarostami seems to be asking us to take our blockbusters more seriously.
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