The Rebellious Gaze of Abbas Kiarostami

Nora Mezo-Willingham 

A third-year student at the University of Toronto, studying history, philosophy, and religion. She is fascinated by all things film and music and curious about how art and politics are enmeshed, particularly during the unrest. 

This article is part of the series “Capital, Technology and Utopia”, which is a collaborative project between Henna Platform and the department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization at The University of Toronto. You can read in this series also: Building the Economy of Mount Lebanon Through Bargaining by Timothy Boudoumit, The Jaffa Orange, Haunted by Hayley Birss, Muslim Surveillance in China and Japan by Zannatul S. Isaque and Taming the Egyptian Monster by Mosab Alnomire.

Read the Arabic article here.

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Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s camera mimics the gaze. It follows the most marginalized villagers on their quests and, by casting the focus of his camera on them, raises their concerns, desires, and interests to the forefront. Kiarostami’s films contain a truly rebellious element. They subvert both the stereotypes of Iran espoused by Western media and dispel myths propagated by the Islamic Republic. He does this under strict repression and censorship and manages in large part to evade persecution by turning his gaze back onto the film itself, engaging in a meta-analysis that sublimates controversial subjects into an aesthetic project. These themes and elements are especially relevant in Kiarostami’s film trio the Koker Trilogy – Where is the Friend’s House (1988), Life and Nothing More (1992), Through the Olive Trees (1994) – of which I intend to explore the cultural and political contexts as situated in a larger history of Iranian cinema.  

Cinema came to Iran on August 18th, 1900, on a French Gaumont camera shot by Mirza Ebrahim Khan in the court of Mozaffreddin Shah Qajar. The first cinema opened four years later, although only for wealthy elites. Iranian film history can be divided into three distinct periods. The first period, between 1929 and 1936, was defined by the emergence of feature films, most of which were made to draw religious people into the theater. This period came to a frustrating end with the actions of some Western production companies who were threatened by the imminent success of Iranian filmmaking. The second period, after World War II, was a revival featuring mostly melodramas and some genre films, before the emergence of avante-garde cinema in the 1960s.

 The Iranian revolution in 1979 began a third period. As the revolution approached, a quarter of all the movie theaters in Iran had been set on fire. Films were viewed as a manifestation of Western corruption and antithetical to Sharia. There were no clear rules around filmmaking under the new establishment for a couple of years. Still, strict censorship eventually prevented any old “corruption” and barred nearly 70% of industry workers whose previous work had been deemed lewd (Mehrabi 2006, 38). There was an attempt to Islamize art, from 1980-88, coinciding with the Iraq war by the Committee for Cultural Revolution. During this period the nascent Islamic Republic was forced to reckon with the fact that film had immense cultural power which went unaddressed by fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence (Mir-Hosseini 2001, 27). After the death of Ruhollah Khomeini in the late 1980s, filmmakers began to challenge the hegemony of fiqh, with Where is the Friend’s House (1988) being one of the first Iranian films to tour international festivals (Mehrabi 2006, 39).  

Kiarostami both benefited from and took part in creating cultural institutions for filmmakers in Iran. Iranian cinema began to flourish under Minister of Culture Mohammad Khatami and with Kiarostami’s contribution to the film department of the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, as well as the massive importance of the Farabi Film Foundation, a new avant-garde emerged (Mehrabi 2006, 39). It was only the Farabi Film Foundation which facilitated production in Iran. Though the foundation only funded family-friendly films, void of sex and violence, directors such as Kiarostami were able to use the local and international exposure afforded to them to convey a more authentic perspective of the country (Aufderheide 1995, 32-33). Kiarostami was interested in filming everyday life– not sensationalized or overtly politicized life, but instead (as one of his film titles suggests) life and nothing more. 

Kiarostami’s desire to depict “the real” Iran is reflected immensely in his films. All three films of the Koker trilogy seek to expose rural Iranians’ unremitting perseverance and humanism. Thanks to Kiarostami’s naturalistic and meandering camerawork, the viewer’s gaze often rests on oft-dismissed members of society: children, women, the elderly, the illiterate, and the impoverished. Though rarely discussed overtly, by bringing these characters, their plights, and their joys, to the forefront, taboo topics of gender roles, access to and quality of education, homelessness, and poverty are centred. Kiarostami comments on this in an interview, saying, “If you mean by political that you talk about today’s human problems, then for sure my work is political and even strongly so. Through the Olive Trees carefully explores the personal problems of [its protagonist] Hossein, which are grounded in real social problems. He belongs to today’s Iran. He’s illiterate. He wants to get married and doesn’t want his children to be poor and illiterate… that cannot be far from politics because you’re showing something about social issues that politics must deal with.” (Aufderheide 1995, 32) In this way, Kiarostami does not have to film didactic political conversations or choreograph intense action scenes to create a politically charged film but simply depicts the lives of those innately politicized by the climate.  

The Islamic Republic represents a highly ideological unreality– like any revolutionary government, they are unable to deliver all of the goals promised. Kiarostami subverts both the utopian ideal of the Islamic Republic, which suggests that life has improved immeasurably since the revolution, by depicting a reality in which the youth are illiterate, and discrimination abounds. In Kiarostami’s Iran, elderly people perform backbreaking labour, and women are not pawns in the familial structure. He presents a nuanced picture of real people. In doing so, he also subverts the dystopian image of Iran that Western news outlets project. He depicts stunning shots of the lush countryside, children playing, young people falling in love, and regular people simply excited to be in a movie. Kiarostami does not shy away from the vicious reality of the Manjil-Rudbar earthquake, and he does not idealize the loss of life incurred nor the implicit threat of corporal punishment against the schoolchildren of Where is the Friend’s House, but neither does he choose to rest his gaze solely on the violent. Instead, he makes room for all of the complexities of human existence.  

The Koker trilogy is unique in its meta-critical quality. Where is the Friend’s House presents a basic, family-friendly story of a young boy who seeks to return his friend’s notebook to save him from expulsion and corporal punishment. Life and Nothing More exposes Where is the Friend’s House as a film, and is aimed at discovering how the young actors are faring after the massive Manjil-Rudbar earthquake. Through the Olive Trees exposes yet another layer of deception by revealing Life and Nothing More to be a staged film with actors. In fact, there are scenes in which the camera’s gaze turns back on itself and films the crew filming the actors. By creating films with simple plots and leaving the levels of reality ambiguous, Kiarostami invites the viewer to take an active stance in interpreting film, engaging with the films as interpreters of meaning rather than being spoon-fed an ideological agenda. Another reason his films succeed under censorship is that they do not espouse a particular ideology, but raise questions about real situations while connecting them to an aesthetic quest (Mitha 2009, 147). 

By turning the camera back on himself, Kiarostami exposes his films’ aesthetic and cinematic nature, evading critiques about plot and content. He is, after all, only depicting real life. Jean-Luc Nancy writes, “the image that the film both represents and designates at the same time– an image that is neither pure and simple ‘life,’ nor an imaginary. Neither a ‘realist’ nor a ‘fictional’ phantasm, but life presented or offered in its evidence” (Nancy 1999, 78). Thus, Kiarostami establishes that his films are collections of real-life occurrences and that they are just that: films. In this way, by establishing his meta-analysis, he succeeds in exploring real-life issues which would usually be considered taboo.  

Ultimately, it is Kiarostami’s ability to express a specific reality, that is, the rural Iranians, in such a way that it is interpretable by the viewer that elevates his films to such a universal status. The viewer sees the plights and joys of young children, women, the elderly, and anyone in between, and they understand the perseverance of the human spirit. This emphasis on humanism subtly defies the dogma of the Islamic Republic and, through Kiarostami’s expert meta-analysis, manages to slip by the censors.  

Bibliography

Aufderheide, Pat, and Abbas Kiarostami. “Real Life Is More Important Than Cinema: An Interview with Abbas Kiarostami.” Cinéaste 21, no. 3 (1995): 31–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41687383. 

Mehrabi, Massoud. “A Bed and Several Dreams: A Short History of Iranian Cinema.” Cinéaste 31, no. 3 (2006): 38–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41690005. 

Mitha, Farouk. “THE FILMS OF ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: FRAMING THE BURDENS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM IDENTITIES.” Arab Studies Quarterly 31, no. 1/2 (2009): 141–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41858579. 

Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. “Iranian Cinema: Art, Society and the State.” Middle East Report, no. 219 (2001): 26–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/1559252. 

Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Verena Andermatt Conley. “On Evidence: ‘Life and Nothing More,’ by Abbas Kiarostami.” Discourse 21, no. 1 (1999): 77–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389521.