Recognized by theorists and critics as an exemplar of an entire national cinematic identity, the introduction of Abbas Kiarostami’s early feature-length films to Western audiences has been lauded retrospectively as ushering in the canonical attention afforded Iranian cinema in recent decades. The Western film-theoretical canon’s incorporation of this national film industry is perhaps best exemplified by my initial introduction to contemporary work through an annual Iranian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, one of the only country-specific spotlights among a program of predominantly-European “arthouse” films. Although I have qualms with the essentialization of an entire industry’s style within the work of a singular director, much less this style’s equivocation with some collective worldview, I do think there is value in Kiarostami’s specific approach to and treatment of the medium of filmmaking which (re)introduces viewers to the filmic experience and potential of looking. Considering two of his more critically-acclaimed works alongside each other, Close-Up and Taste of Cherry, I hope to demonstrate how Kiarostami’s non-narrative approach and intentional development of absence set “the story” free, allowing for the development of an individual selfhood through the invocation of specific ways of seeing, understanding, and being in the world both on- and off-screen.
With a camera prone to wandering, lingering, and total stillness, it becomes immediately apparent that Kiarostami is not concerned with an exploration of linear narrativity. In the subversion of these conventions of narrative filmmaking, Kiarostami’s films might be more appropriately understood as cultivating absence (of plot, politics, “information,” etc.). In the opening scene of Close-Up, the viewer’s expectations are consistently averted, calling attention instead to the construction of the narrative playing out on screen: as the reporter who assumes initial diegetic prominence alludes to his intention of exposing Sabzian and initiating his arrest upon the taxi’s arrival at the house of the Ahankhahs, presumed narrative linearity is confronted by a refusal of the camera. Here, a distance is imposed which withholds our access to the happenings of reality that become central to the film proceeding. As the camera lingers outside the walled-in property, denied entrance by an architectural style of concealment which draws upon a larger cultural context of modesty, the formal progression of the narrative becomes aware of its own methods of construction through the introduction of a new way of seeing, or, more specifically not seeing. Concerned less with the reality of Sabzian’s story than with the reality of its methods of reconstruction, Kiarostami’s direction extrapolates this initial imposition of diegetic distance into a methodical contemplation of absence as the scene unfolds: though stated to not have had any singular meaning or significance, the space afforded the kicked-can as it rolls across the pavement opens up the film to the reality of its own inability to access the reality being reconstructed, and in this space exists a poetic potential which has arguably become definitive of Kiarostami’s approach to filmmaking. Through similar instances of absence and the camera’s tendency to focus on the moments “in between,” his films are freed of plot-driven linearity and in its place, the story finds space to take root.
In his essay on “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin establishes a distinction between the pre-colonial/ -capitalist cultural existence of “the story” within oral tradition, and the forecasted death of the story in a societal privileging of information. In this separation of the story from information, which attributes the loss of power and magical potential in the novel to a concern for elaboration and the construction of a “believable” reality, a reading of Kiarostami’s films as an exercise in storytelling reveals these contrived absences’ allowance of an insertion of selfhood into the films’ visuality. Alongside the architectural invocation of Iran’s modesty system in Close-Up, the near-total absence of women in Taste of Cherry might be understood as furthering this worldview, or an Iranian-cinematic way of looking, but beyond this essentialization to the restrictions inherent to the situation of the film’s production, the absence of sexuality contributes to a general landscape of desolation which serves as the backdrop to Badii’s journey towards death. Complicating an innate cinematic desire to know and understand, this barrenness becomes an externalization of Badii’s importantly presumed affliction: the absence inherent to the requisition of presumption once again creates the space necessary for the story to be set free. Provided with no insight informing Badii’s desire to end his life, our view of the world created by the film itself becomes synonymous with Badii’s, and in this openness, as in the black screen of Badii’s death, the viewer is met with a mirror through which they might look inward. Reactivating the magic potential of the story through a cinematic reinstatement of the act of looking – in which we are shown the world “as it is” without being told how to think – the imaginal space of Badii’s affliction, as in Close-Up’s conflation of any semblance of narrative with the reality of Sabzian’s trial and performance as Makhmalbaf, operates as a dehiscence in subjectivity which allows the viewer to locate their own selfhood in the convergence of the worlds on and off screen: the cinematic “look” is transformed into a way of being.
When the aerosol can is kicked for the second time in the opening scene of Close-Up, the metallic ring of its journey across the pavement gives way to the sound of a printer publishing the article written about Sabzian’s arrest, signaling not only a jump from the arrest’s reenactment to diegetic “real” time as the title card is superimposed on the screen, but once again calling attention to the apparatus of a device constructing this reality. Simulating the forensic reconstruction of a crime in the search for truth, Kiarostami’s recreation is furthered in its imaginal potential by the actors performing the role of themselves. Alongside the camera’s generation of a new reality through its presence in Sabzian’s trial, the splitting of subjectivity in the actors’ portrayal of their own experience introduces an agency which allows for their participation in the construction of selfhood. Through this poetically-concise transposition, Kiarostami’s film not only fulfills Sabzian’s initial promise to the Ahankhas by actualizing their aspirations of being in a film, but the subversion of conceived reality in the instance of Sabzian’s (re)performance as Makhmalbaf demonstrates the imaginal potential of cinema – and by extension art, poetry – in the self-invention inherent to Sabzian’s desire to be someone other than himself. Addressed by the judge inquisitively: “aren’t you acting for the camera right now?” Sabzian’s perceived transition from playing the role of Makhmalbaf to that of a sensitive soul before the court necessarily complicates notions of reality in an understanding of self. Refuting the essentialized construction of a concrete identity, Kiarostami’s directorial draw towards Sabzian’s story alludes to a symbiosis in their ways of looking. Sabzian’s thoughtfully- considered responses to cross-examination during the trial convey a near-irrefutable authenticity which bleeds into his perspective as expressed in the second scene of his arrest. The question of who Sabzian/ Makhmalbaf is throughout the film soon becomes arbitrary as the role of art is revealed in its potential to convey an internal reality. Though considered lawfully wrong to deceive the Ahankhas and claim to be someone other than himself, in many ways Sabzian did exist in reality as Makhmalbaf in his shared worldview as an artist and aspiring filmmaker. In its cinematic effect, these juxtapositions neutralize any conflicting connotations of reality between scenes of reconstruction and documentation, and because of the contrived transparency in the film’s methods of production, the development of Sabzian’s psychological “case” through a dilation of time in the filming of the trial and a doubling of time in the reconstructions of his arrest invites viewers not only to empathize with his potential to forge a new reality, but also consider our own engagement with a dehiscence in subjectivity.
Close-Up’s camera is replaced by the automobile in Taste of Cherry, and whereas Kiarostami’s approach in documenting Sabzian’s trial elucidates a transitory worldview, we are intentionally prevented from emotionally identifying with Badii, whose worldview seems most aptly embodied in the self-reflexive absences captured within the frame of the car window. The rotating cast of passengers offer up a variety of socially-informed exoteric “ways of looking” generated in their interfacing with Badii’s orientation towards death, but the empty seat’s imposition of distance inherent to the filming of these conversations inside the car– along with gaps in the chronological progression of time, scenes of darkness, and other instances of absence and the “in-between” throughout the film– reinforce the subject’s esoteric containment of an internal “nothingness.” As viewers confronted with this nothingness, we are implicated by Kiarostami’s cultivated absences to look inward, following in Sabzian’s self-actualizing footsteps (the lie’s generation of a new reality from the possibility inherent to this same internal “nothing”) and restoring the contemplative potential of the story through our inhabitance of the imaginal space on screen.
During the moments preceding the second reenactment of Sabzian’s arrest, his final musings in the performed role of Makhmalbaf (which is to say an expression of his own internal reality) foreground the importance of feeling close to nature, paralleling once more Kiarostami’s own worldview as exemplified by the sweeping, panoramic landscapes captured throughout the Koker trilogy. Contextualized alongside aforementioned adherence to codes of modesty and censorship as contributing to an Iranian-cinematic worldview, this particular reverence for nature in Kiarostami’s invocation of a “cinema of presence” might suggest a specifically-Indigenous way of seeing, understanding, and knowing. Through this lens, the subversion of cinematic conventions of narrative linearity and privileging of moments of marked absence might be understood as paralleling a refusal of the colonial imposition of a specific worldview through the modes of (re)education that were fundamental to most, if not all, colonial projects. Regardless, experiencing this absence as the can rolls across the pavement, or dirt cascades from a crumbling hillside, or the sun sets slowly over the buildings of Tehran, or the moonlight is swallowed by clouds into darkness, we are effectively split and afforded the space to recognize our way of looking through the world of Kiarostami’s films, into ourselves, as a way of being which exists between the on- and off-screen.
With a camera prone to wandering, lingering, and total stillness, it becomes immediately apparent that Kiarostami is not concerned with an exploration of linear narrativity. In the subversion of these conventions of narrative filmmaking, Kiarostami’s films might be more appropriately understood as cultivating absence (of plot, politics, “information,” etc.). In the opening scene of Close-Up, the viewer’s expectations are consistently averted, calling attention instead to the construction of the narrative playing out on screen: as the reporter who assumes initial diegetic prominence alludes to his intention of exposing Sabzian and initiating his arrest upon the taxi’s arrival at the house of the Ahankhahs, presumed narrative linearity is confronted by a refusal of the camera. Here, a distance is imposed which withholds our access to the happenings of reality that become central to the film proceeding. As the camera lingers outside the walled-in property, denied entrance by an architectural style of concealment which draws upon a larger cultural context of modesty, the formal progression of the narrative becomes aware of its own methods of construction through the introduction of a new way of seeing, or, more specifically not seeing. Concerned less with the reality of Sabzian’s story than with the reality of its methods of reconstruction, Kiarostami’s direction extrapolates this initial imposition of diegetic distance into a methodical contemplation of absence as the scene unfolds: though stated to not have had any singular meaning or significance, the space afforded the kicked-can as it rolls across the pavement opens up the film to the reality of its own inability to access the reality being reconstructed, and in this space exists a poetic potential which has arguably become definitive of Kiarostami’s approach to filmmaking. Through similar instances of absence and the camera’s tendency to focus on the moments “in between,” his films are freed of plot-driven linearity and in its place, the story finds space to take root.
In his essay on “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin establishes a distinction between the pre-colonial/ -capitalist cultural existence of “the story” within oral tradition, and the forecasted death of the story in a societal privileging of information. In this separation of the story from information, which attributes the loss of power and magical potential in the novel to a concern for elaboration and the construction of a “believable” reality, a reading of Kiarostami’s films as an exercise in storytelling reveals these contrived absences’ allowance of an insertion of selfhood into the films’ visuality. Alongside the architectural invocation of Iran’s modesty system in Close-Up, the near-total absence of women in Taste of Cherry might be understood as furthering this worldview, or an Iranian-cinematic way of looking, but beyond this essentialization to the restrictions inherent to the situation of the film’s production, the absence of sexuality contributes to a general landscape of desolation which serves as the backdrop to Badii’s journey towards death. Complicating an innate cinematic desire to know and understand, this barrenness becomes an externalization of Badii’s importantly presumed affliction: the absence inherent to the requisition of presumption once again creates the space necessary for the story to be set free. Provided with no insight informing Badii’s desire to end his life, our view of the world created by the film itself becomes synonymous with Badii’s, and in this openness, as in the black screen of Badii’s death, the viewer is met with a mirror through which they might look inward. Reactivating the magic potential of the story through a cinematic reinstatement of the act of looking – in which we are shown the world “as it is” without being told how to think – the imaginal space of Badii’s affliction, as in Close-Up’s conflation of any semblance of narrative with the reality of Sabzian’s trial and performance as Makhmalbaf, operates as a dehiscence in subjectivity which allows the viewer to locate their own selfhood in the convergence of the worlds on and off screen: the cinematic “look” is transformed into a way of being.
When the aerosol can is kicked for the second time in the opening scene of Close-Up, the metallic ring of its journey across the pavement gives way to the sound of a printer publishing the article written about Sabzian’s arrest, signaling not only a jump from the arrest’s reenactment to diegetic “real” time as the title card is superimposed on the screen, but once again calling attention to the apparatus of a device constructing this reality. Simulating the forensic reconstruction of a crime in the search for truth, Kiarostami’s recreation is furthered in its imaginal potential by the actors performing the role of themselves. Alongside the camera’s generation of a new reality through its presence in Sabzian’s trial, the splitting of subjectivity in the actors’ portrayal of their own experience introduces an agency which allows for their participation in the construction of selfhood. Through this poetically-concise transposition, Kiarostami’s film not only fulfills Sabzian’s initial promise to the Ahankhas by actualizing their aspirations of being in a film, but the subversion of conceived reality in the instance of Sabzian’s (re)performance as Makhmalbaf demonstrates the imaginal potential of cinema – and by extension art, poetry – in the self-invention inherent to Sabzian’s desire to be someone other than himself. Addressed by the judge inquisitively: “aren’t you acting for the camera right now?” Sabzian’s perceived transition from playing the role of Makhmalbaf to that of a sensitive soul before the court necessarily complicates notions of reality in an understanding of self. Refuting the essentialized construction of a concrete identity, Kiarostami’s directorial draw towards Sabzian’s story alludes to a symbiosis in their ways of looking. Sabzian’s thoughtfully- considered responses to cross-examination during the trial convey a near-irrefutable authenticity which bleeds into his perspective as expressed in the second scene of his arrest. The question of who Sabzian/ Makhmalbaf is throughout the film soon becomes arbitrary as the role of art is revealed in its potential to convey an internal reality. Though considered lawfully wrong to deceive the Ahankhas and claim to be someone other than himself, in many ways Sabzian did exist in reality as Makhmalbaf in his shared worldview as an artist and aspiring filmmaker. In its cinematic effect, these juxtapositions neutralize any conflicting connotations of reality between scenes of reconstruction and documentation, and because of the contrived transparency in the film’s methods of production, the development of Sabzian’s psychological “case” through a dilation of time in the filming of the trial and a doubling of time in the reconstructions of his arrest invites viewers not only to empathize with his potential to forge a new reality, but also consider our own engagement with a dehiscence in subjectivity.
Close-Up’s camera is replaced by the automobile in Taste of Cherry, and whereas Kiarostami’s approach in documenting Sabzian’s trial elucidates a transitory worldview, we are intentionally prevented from emotionally identifying with Badii, whose worldview seems most aptly embodied in the self-reflexive absences captured within the frame of the car window. The rotating cast of passengers offer up a variety of socially-informed exoteric “ways of looking” generated in their interfacing with Badii’s orientation towards death, but the empty seat’s imposition of distance inherent to the filming of these conversations inside the car– along with gaps in the chronological progression of time, scenes of darkness, and other instances of absence and the “in-between” throughout the film– reinforce the subject’s esoteric containment of an internal “nothingness.” As viewers confronted with this nothingness, we are implicated by Kiarostami’s cultivated absences to look inward, following in Sabzian’s self-actualizing footsteps (the lie’s generation of a new reality from the possibility inherent to this same internal “nothing”) and restoring the contemplative potential of the story through our inhabitance of the imaginal space on screen.
During the moments preceding the second reenactment of Sabzian’s arrest, his final musings in the performed role of Makhmalbaf (which is to say an expression of his own internal reality) foreground the importance of feeling close to nature, paralleling once more Kiarostami’s own worldview as exemplified by the sweeping, panoramic landscapes captured throughout the Koker trilogy. Contextualized alongside aforementioned adherence to codes of modesty and censorship as contributing to an Iranian-cinematic worldview, this particular reverence for nature in Kiarostami’s invocation of a “cinema of presence” might suggest a specifically-Indigenous way of seeing, understanding, and knowing. Through this lens, the subversion of cinematic conventions of narrative linearity and privileging of moments of marked absence might be understood as paralleling a refusal of the colonial imposition of a specific worldview through the modes of (re)education that were fundamental to most, if not all, colonial projects. Regardless, experiencing this absence as the can rolls across the pavement, or dirt cascades from a crumbling hillside, or the sun sets slowly over the buildings of Tehran, or the moonlight is swallowed by clouds into darkness, we are effectively split and afforded the space to recognize our way of looking through the world of Kiarostami’s films, into ourselves, as a way of being which exists between the on- and off-screen.