باد ما را خواهد برد The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami 
Writer:   Abbas Kiarostami
Cinematographer: Mahmoud Kayari
Cast:        Behzad Boranu
Language: Persian

A man and his team arrives in a Kurdish village from Tehran posing as telecom engineers. The purpose of their visit is not made clear to us but we know that it is related to the impending death of a woman who is more than 100 years old. As the wait turns out to be a long one, the protagonist who is called Engineer by the villagers, begins to be fascinated by the village life.

By the end of the film we piece together that they are journalists who are there to document a village ritual related to mourning. Engineer becomes friends with a local kid who is in the middle of his exams. There is not much of a plot to speak of and it is seemingly a very simple film with binaries of urban and rural, old and young, and modern and ancient. It takes a while to get into the film but when it does, it becomes a great watch. 

The title of the film comes from a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad.

"In my small night, ah
the wind has a date with the leaves of the trees
in my small night there is agony of destruction
listen
do you hear the darkness blowing?
I look upon this bliss as a stranger
I am addicted to my despair.

listen do you hear the darkness blowing?
something is passing in the night
the moon is restless and red
and over this rooftop
where crumbling is a constant fear
clouds, like a procession of mourners
seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.
a moment
and then nothing
night shudders beyond this window
and the earth winds to a halt
beyond this window
something unknown is watching you and me.

O green from head to foot
place your hands like a burning memory
in my loving hands
give your lips to the caresses
of my loving lips
like the warm perception of being
the wind will take us
the wind will take us."

It was the follow-up film from Abbas Kiarostami after he won Palme d'Or at Cannes for 'Taste of Cherry'. What makes Kiarostami different from other Iranian filmmakers of his time is that he is much more European in his approach with existentialism being the common theme. This film is also not much different. I've only seen his later films beginning with 'Taste of Cherry' and I guess I've to catch up with his earlier works to see whether this is consistent throughout his career. Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is the contemporary one who very much carries the mantle from Kiarostami.

Rating: 4/5

ライク・サムワン・イン・ラブ (Like Someone in Love) (2012)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Writer:    Abbas Kiarostami
Cast:       Rin Takanashi, Tadashi Okuno, Ryo Kase
Language: Japanese

In Tokyo, sociology student Akiko moonlights as a high-end prostitute while her relatively cruder boyfriend is suspicious. One night she is assigned to Takashi, a very old university professor, who is more interested in companionship rather than sex. The next day, while he drops off Akiko at the university, he meets the boyfriend who mistakes him for her grandfather. He offers some advise for the young boy which he thinks will help them both in their relationship and all three of them have a bonding like session in the car.

It is Kiarostami's first feature film in Japanese after his foray into making a French film with 'Certified Copy'. I guess he is doing it so that he could express himself better by handling subjects that Iranian films won't entertain. He might have chosen Japan so that he would get a quite Westernized country, where there is legalized prostitution, while at the same time holding traditional Asian family values at least outside the big towns. Akiko's grandmother is visiting Tokyo that day and wants to meet her. Akiko is reluctant because she knows that her grandmother is also suspicious about her activities having seen posters of her in the railway station. Her handler forces her to attend to her next assignment and she is quite surprised to see a very old person waiting for her. The film proceeds at an elderly pace and because of that the ending can seem very abrupt leaving you scratching your head wondering what exactly was the point. The ending kind of reminded me of Michael Haneke films, especially Cache. The point I guess would be the generation gap between the grandfather like figure and the couple he encounters. The boy is somewhat patriarchal, harking back to older times, and he is kind of caught up between the two Japans. His idea of marriage is to have the right to have more control over her. Akiko seems quite adept at playing the Metro girl after moving there from her small town. Professor seems estranged from his family and has opted for Akiko because of the similarity in appearance to his family. All of them are under some form of alienation.

I encounter Tokyo mostly through Japanese films from Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike and both of them portray the seedier side of the city. So it was quite a refreshing change to see the beautiful side of it in Kiarostami's sedate film. It is a great watch and very beautiful to look at. Language can get in the way when directors handle a foreign language film and it did seem that the Japanese sounded bit different in the film, slower and less shriller. Since I don't know the language it didn't affect me in anyway but it would be interesting to see how it was received in Japan.

Rating: 4/5

                                                                      

Copie conforme (Certified Copy) (2010)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Writers:  Abbas Kiarostami, Caroline Eliacheff
Cast:       Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
Language: French, English, Italian

In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged British writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Luicgnano. While there, a chance question reveals something deeper.

The film starts with a discussion on the new book from the writer titled- 'Certified Copy'. It is a book on art which questions the idea of originality taking the value attached to the original paintings for eg. As the writer explains later in the film, why should one disparage a copy work of 'Mona Lisa' since it also captures the emotion of the picture in an accurate way and in a sense Da Vinci's work is also not original since it is also a copy of the expression in her face. We are shown Binoche attending the press conference with her kid and leaving a calling card for the writer. When they eventually meet on a Sunday, it looks like she is trying to court him and the discussion they have is around the ideas from the book. From the start of the film, what we have towards Binoche is a sense of irritation and she continues in that vein throughout the film. A lady from a restaurant asks her questions thinking that they are a married couple and she tags along with the writer also seeming to join in. From there the film takes a weird turn as it looks like they do have quite a shared history and have been in a relationship for fifteen years. It seems that he is quite successful in his line of work and has become tired of her and their kid and lives a life of his own. She is resentful because of that and want to fix things by living together again whereas he is not at all sentimental and feels that where they are now at is just natural progression of things in a relationship when all the false hopes that people have at the time of marriage are vanquished. Bincohe is a sorry sentimental figure the whole way through but I suppose some of my own biases are coming through there.

If one supposes that they are indeed a couple, be it in a marriage or a mistress relationship, then the first 30-40 minutes of the film will look like a great convolution to misdirect us in to thinking that they were not. I am sure plenty of things from the beginning parts of film won't make much sense. So I guess the writer is just role-playing and the whole exercise is like a psychological counselling for her. Maybe they both play the same role they are playing here but with different people in their respective marriages and they are just demonstrating the discussion they had on the idea of perfect copies and the concept of originality. In the end it acts as a very surreal film without any usage of surreal imagery or time and space jumps. I really have to watch it again to determine whether it supports any of the two obvious interpretations.  It can do come across as a bit pretentious but I enjoyed watching it.

It was Kiarostami's second collaboration with Bincohe after 'Shirin'. Film marked the debut for William Shimell who is a well known opera singer. Film got an automatic ban in Iran since it depicts Western culture and la general lack of agreement with Binoche's attire. It won her best actress award at Cannes and she highlighted the plight of Jafar Pinahi during her acceptance speech.

Rating: 4.5/5