Ten (2002)

Abbas Kiarostami, in Ten, as in his other films, directly engages material traditionally submerged by narrative. His themes lay about on the surface, sunbathing, while most filmmakers abandon their themes to darkness and eternal paleness.

The material substance of Ten is Mania Akbari in a car, mostly driving, often talking and often listening to a rotating ensemble of passengers, recorded by two dashboard mounted cameras (all the film's photography a product of this setup). The takes are long and the cuts few, Kiarostami prefers to hold on his characters for extended stretches, even when they are not the ones talking; this allows the audience to 'discover' the characters, rather than force the characters and moments into shapes through manipulative editing.

Often the things Amin Maher (Mania's real life son, who plays her son and frequent passenger in the movie) does with his face and body expose details about his relationship with his mother (though he'll tell his mother when she's begun to irritate him, you'll see it on his face first, or perhaps by the way he plays with his schoolbag) and his development as a person. He behaves like a child (squirmy, impatient), but not only like a child: Mania has divorced the boy's father as part of a greater effort for female social lib, so, natural for a boy in this situation, he also exhibits shades of adulthood. In his situation he must express his ideas (or echo cultural ideas he's been taught and not yet challenged for himself). It's a very specific role, the kind that comes from a confluence of real life particulars, and the mother/son dynamics are excitingly complex. In many aspects the boy is a foil to the mother, in some ways an antagonist, a multifaceted symbol of opposition, but always a son.

All other passengers are women, no two are duplicates, and each has her own idea about how to be a woman, how a woman is supposed to behave. Because Kiorastami so expertly grounds his characters in reality, and because in reality women are intricately specific and idiosyncratic, the dramatic action is as simple as developing conversations. When a new person enters the car the talk is at first light and circumstantial, then differences accumulate, unshared opinions collide, and eventually important, basic views become illuminated through dialogue.

Ten is kind of a highbrow essay film version of Taxicab Confessions.

Kiarostami's art is captivating both because of how simple it begins and because of how big and meaningful it becomes. Everything blossoms in his movies. Character revelations have a corollary relationship with an audience member's intelligence and curiosity, and for every one thing at first hidden that Kiarostami slowly reveals, two or three or more things should occur to the audience to consider, such that by the end of the film the audience member may carry tenfold the weight of narrative contemplation compared to films rich and dense in dramatics, but which chain, bound, maybe gag their themes in subtextual dungeons.

And all this produces this amazing and very rare extra layer, a Kiarostami specialty: the cinematic form is a kind of parallel to the film's interior themes. Think of a poem, it's like that, think of it on paper, the way it looks, think of its rhythms, the way it sounds, each part contributing to a total meaning. The way Kiarostami stirs the deeper parts of ourselves through selective and highly important filmic qualities, few (minimal) but important ones, mirrors the nature of Mania Akbari's desire for liberation from tradition. What Akbari wants is both complex and simple, her liberation a matter of choosing her life's path for herself, avoiding, when possible, boundaries imposed by exterior forces.

If it sounds confusing or heavy it's because words get in the way. Everything is crystallized in the movie. Two people talk to each other, shot by one of two cameras, while sitting in a car. That's it (and there's so much more).

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle and Certified Copy

I believe Silviu, the lead in If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, has a tempest in his soul. He's eighteen and has been incarcerated for four years, and in a conversation with his mother says he spent eight years raising his brother, so he started raising his younger brother around the age of six or ten (did he raise his brother from his cell? If the mother has only just arrived, possibly). I think it's fair to say Silvie has a tempest in his soul.

"Most of all I like eating pizza."

The movie is a great portrait of trapped feelings, with a heightening condition of incarceration, helping focus the film on themes of control and manliness (brotherhood, fatherhood, selfhood). It begins slowly as crescendos do. In the beginning moments I enjoyed the film's grainy texture and its invitation into the world of Silviu; it really opens up with Ana's appearance. She's an exterior force, and he dreams of being with her after his imminent (fourteen days away) release. "And I'll pick her up from work, and we'll fuck right there in the car. And we'll fuck on and on and on," he speculates.

She becomes a goal, along with a reunion with his brother. When his mother threatens to take his brother away to Italy, Silviu, in jail, wonders not only what to do, but how to even do it. His mother's interference signifies the presence of obstructive factors in the pursuit of his goals, an indication of uncontrollable reality, so different from prison. The actor, George Pistereanu, who plays Silviu, has the gift of believability. He doesn't betray, through his performance, or through his eyes, his character's future. For the audience member this means a feeling of a shared experience, it allows us to come near him emotionally, and understand the extremity of his desperation by the actions of the film's later moments.

At a certain moment in the film another interceding moment of harsh reality reconfigures the film's stakes. It becomes a much different film than its proceeding moments have indicated, yet remains logical, and mostly consistent. It's as if the gates have opened, and life has poured in. Locked inside Silviu, we are trapped as he is trapped, scared as he is scared. This is the gift of a good film.

Certified Copy begins with a scene waiting for action: an empty table set up for a book discussion. A man enters the frame and makes an apologetic announcement into the microphone: the author is late, and he can't blame traffic because he's staying upstairs. Scattered laughter. Moments later the author arrives and unwittingly makes a similar statement: the banality of the joke is apparent, and no one laughs this time.

Kiarostami has made his point in the first couple minutes of the film, but the idea of an original and a copy will take manifold permutations throughout the film. So too will there be multifarious jokes about Elle (Juliette Binoche) and James (William Shimell) being married, although they met just this day. The joke, as it's elaborated, nearly replaces the actuality of their relationship, and becomes its own copy of a life. Certified Copy is an essay film and a romantic comedy, not one more than the other, which is impressive. I was emotionally invested in every moment of the actors' encounters with each other, and also found my mind working out the ideas being discussed. It's an "invitation to self-inquiry," as the author speaks in the beginning moments.

"I wrote the book to convince myself of my own idea."

Elle initiated the day by passing on her number to the author's friend. Her son, present only in the opening scenes, challenges her reasons for wanting to meet an author whose book she's claimed to dislike. Elle will also tell James, in moments over the course of their time together, how she does not like or disagrees with his book. Sometimes she suggests she does not like him, and in one instance he flatly states that something she's said has made him not like her. Romantic comedies often generate laughter by noticing the differences between the male and female characters, and Certified Copy does this too, but it's also serious about the meaning of their differences and the friction it creates.

"All that stuff's good for books."

Some people may not find it romantic at all. I found it romantic, but not very funny (much of the comedy is monochrome). I think this is what happens when a film is full of life. I think this is what films should be like. I believe there's a proper, acceptable way for a film to be flawed, and that's by virtue of flawed characters or admissions of flawed existence.

In Certified Copy, Kiarostami lets life in. The film buzzes and hums with life. Ambient noises and conversations float in the air, and cell phones ring at inappropriate times. His camera is endless curious and attracted to what it finds most interesting, most telling (and it's never insincere). Life happens between moments in the film, like when James answers his phone and leaves the coffee shop, and Elle begins a conversation with the lady who works at the shop; or when Elle pretties herself in the restaurant, and returns to find James in a different mood (this is the end too - you wonder what condition James returns to find Elle in). The frame has limitless potential with Kiarostami, and as when we watch a movie our thoughts are somewhat encapsulated by the frame, Kiarostami then frees our minds too. In this one, he wants to free our hearts as well, but he knows how hard that can be, and he knows that "simplicity is not simple."