Abbas Kiarostami

Raj Lalwani soaks in the poetry that runs through the contemplative photographs of Abbas Kiarostami, the legendary Iranian filmmaker, whose journey shares a significant link to the history of photography.

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Nothing that is written about Abbas Kiarostami can do what one’s eyes can. It’s almost futile dissecting this legendary auteur’s whimsical ways of craft, for the beauty in any moment that’s Kiarostamiesque lies not in its meaning, or even its perception, but merely in the fact that it is.

So when the filmmaker, in the midst of showing us what happens to the imposter Sabzian in his seminal film Close-Up, chooses to hover his gaze on a green aerosol can, rolling down the street, the viewer is thrown off. The can continues to roll, with the camera almost insistent on showing us every idiosyncratic second of its downward trajectory. For almost an entire minute, the camera, and thus, we, gaze at the minutest detail that doesn’t seem to have any connection to the story. But Kiarostami’s storytelling, was always not as much about the story, as it was, of its telling, and even more, of its listening. The images he would show, weren’t as much what is seen, as they were on seeing.

That Kiarostami is one of the most defiantly individualistic voices in the history of cinema is no surprise. Often working with untrained actors whom he would encounter on location, his work tends to hinge on the ambiguity that lies between truth and fiction, documentary and staged. A lot of his cinema is also about cinema itself, raising questions of what’s real and what isn’t. For instance, filmmakers are common characters in the world of a Kiarostami film, and sometimes, actors address the camera (and thus, the viewer) directly, identifying the fact that they are actors, playing a certain role. A film within the film, while acknowledging that it is a film.