Film reviews: Kiarostami, part 1

Where is the Friend's Home? (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987). One of the greatest films about children ever made, Kiarostami's first masterpiece is a delightful, deliberately paced film that thoughtfully evokes village life with excellent, uncluttered photography and an externally simple/internally complex story. Kiarostami's film stresses the importance of mutual responsibility and sacrifice in an increasingly self-centered world with impressive non-professional actors to whom Kiarostami gives distinct voices. Where is the Friend's Home? captures Kiarostami at his most naturalistic and accessible and is probably the best entry point into his long and often challenging filmography (even if it is not his most representative). A.

Close-Up (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990). The second Kiarostami film to be given the Criterion treatment is a startling mix of cinematic and documentary aesthetic, which allows Kiarostami to pose difficult questions about truth and reality. Why do we instinctively watch a film differently when it is presented to us as “true” as opposed to a work of “fiction”? How does the artifice of film both remove and reinforce our self-image? At the end of the film, we find that fact and fiction have always been intricately woven into each other--that they are each codependent creations eternally suggesting the other. Kiarostami's dizzying layers, impossible arrangements, and intellectual audacity can barely be contained in the film. A-.

[Next up: And Life Goes On / Through the Olive Trees]