This film is the famous work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, and it is also his first film to enter the international field. It was well received in Iran and won the special recommendation award of the jury of the Tehran Film Festival. Since 1989 It was screened in Europe, first at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, and won the Bronze Leopard Award, the Jury Award and the Fabisi Special Recommendation Award. In the same year, it won the Art Film Award at the Cannes International Film Festival. Since we are quite unfamiliar with Abbas and the whole Iranian film, it is necessary to give some background information before reviewing this film.
Abbas Kiarostami is well known as the most important film director in Iran and the world today. The Locarno Film Festival, which was the first to put Abbas on the international film scene, held a retrospective exhibition of Abbas' films from August 3 to 13, 1995, showing all his works since filming. A full-page advertisement published in the July-August issue of the French "Cinema" magazine commented on Abbas: "The vision created by this talented Iranian director marks a new level of contemporary cinema every year. ." At the same time, the issue of the "Cinema Manual" (114 pages in total) also provides a comprehensive introduction to Abbas and his films in 48 pages.
Advertisements may have to be exaggerated and untruthful, but Abbas's reputation was in full swing at the time. Although it was just over halfway through the 1990s, Abbas was already considered "the most important film director to emerge in the world of cinema in the 1990s". This bold view originated in Europe, but soon spread to the entire Western world, and European and American directors such as Tarantino, Kusturica, Gidiguan, Crabish, Claire Simon, Godard, etc. Bass and his works have poured great enthusiasm, especially the French director Godard, who has always liked to make outrageous remarks. It is said that after seeing Abbas's film at the Cannes Film Festival, he declared openly: "The film started with Griffith, Stop at Kiarostami!"
In the Western film world at the time, Abbas's reputation even surpassed that of the highly regarded Kieslowski, which was somehow related to Godard. In 1994, Godard wrote a letter of thanks to the New York Film Critics Association, declining the society's award for his film and condemning the Americans for placing Kieslowski's achievements in the hands of Kiarostami. The above approach has been criticized for the Iranian director's cold reception in the United States (Godard prefers Kiarostami's unpretentious humanism to Kieslowski's devious mysticism). Godard's move aroused strong repercussions in the American film critics. Soon after, "White Balloon" (which won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995), written by Abbas and directed by Jafar Pahassi, who served as his associate director, was released in art theaters in the United States, and not only won Widely acclaimed and setting box office records for Iranian films in the United States, Abbas's name is beginning to truly become known to American audiences.
Abbas's reputation is not created or hyped by the Western media, because the people who strongly recommend and praise him and his films are all famous European and American directors at the international level. . At the same time, the oriental film master Akira Kurosawa also expressed his sincere admiration for Abbas shortly before his death: "It is difficult to find exact words to comment on Kiarostami's films, just watch his films How amazing it is to understand them. I was so heartbroken when Rey died, and after watching the Kiarostami film, I thought God sent this guy to replace Rey, thank God!" The words are not only good, but they are also true.
Abbas Kiarostami was born in a middle-class family in Tehran on June 22, 1940 (his father was a house decorator). He was obsessed with art since childhood and studied at the Tehran Academy of Fine Arts when he was young. Part-time work in the department, and at the same time engaged in advertising creativity, decoration design and other things, and completed his studies after 13 years. During his studies, he shot nearly 150 commercials and participated in the art design of several feature films. In 1969, at the invitation of the head of the Iranian Youth Education Development Association (referred to as "Kanun", the Western spelling is "Kanun"), Abbas founded the film department in the institution, and almost all the films he shot before 1992. All produced by this agency.
As of 1995, Abbas has made 21 films, including 14 short films and 7 feature films. Abbas's short films include feature films, documentaries and scientific and educational films, which have laid a solid foundation for future feature film creation. The first feature film "Report" was filmed in 1977, and in the 1980s, "Primary School Freshman" (1985), "Where Is My Friend's House" (1987) and "Homework" (1989) were filmed successively. In 1990, he made "Close-Up" based on a news report, in which document and fiction were intertwined, about a man named Asai Shabuzian posing as the famous Iranian director Mohsin Mahmarbaf. A story of deception. This is one of Abbas's favorite works, and its importance lies in rethinking people's concept of film, making films known to more Iranians, and increasing the international popularity of Iranian films. His next two films, "Life Goes On" (1992) and "Under the Olive Tree" (1994), won him several international awards and his first Oscar nomination for an Iranian film.
"Where Is My Friend's House" was filmed in a small town called Kegel in northwestern Iran and several nearby villages, about 400 kilometers north of Tehran. "Life Continues" and "Under the Olive Tree" also They were all filmed here, and film researchers in many countries have unanimously called these films the Abbas Film Trilogy. These three works (as well as "Close-Up") reflect Abbas' unique artistic style relatively intensively. The following points should be mentioned first:
Using documentary film techniques to capture the original state of life, while breaking the boundaries between reality and illusion, preferring children as actors and performance objects, refusing to use professional actors, repeating the same themes, repeatedly scrutinizing the uncertainty of character dialogue, plot and even the shooting process , with an open-ended play structure and ending, etc.
The reason why Abbas chose a remote plateau village like Kegel as the filming location is because it is lush green and beautiful scenery. The locals have hardly watched movies, or even TV. The local folk customs are simple and honest. , not or less polluted by modern civilization.
Talking about the original idea of "Where is My Friend's House", Abbas said that two small things triggered his creative desire. One is that he happens to have a son who is the same age as the child in the film. One night, a friend of his came to visit, and his son walked six kilometers in downtown Tehran to buy them cigarettes. Another was about a girl Abbas had heard of helping her classmates with their homework. However, the decisive inspiration for him to create the film came mainly from the poem "Where is the place where friends live" by the Iranian poet Sukhrabi Sepehri (Abbas did dedicate the film to the poet) , the poem describes a child's journey to find a friend's place to live.
The "friends" mentioned in Abbas's films are not so much the relationship between the two little protagonists as the "friends" that go beyond the concrete signified to the abstract signifier, or the capitalized "friends" ". Ahmed and Nematzad are just ordinary classmates, just at the same table. Ahmed accidentally brought a classmate's workbook back to his home, so Ahmed embarked on a long journey to find a friend's home. I came to the village where my friend's house is located and asked everyone I met "Where is my friend's house", but no one could tell him exactly, or no one took his inquiry seriously. In the end, he was led by a kind old man to the door of his friend's house, but stopped only "two steps away" from his friend's house, and finally did not enter the threshold of his friend's house, something (such as shame, he first He took a friend's workbook by mistake, delayed his friend's homework, and now the book has been torn out again) to prevent him from knocking on the door of his friend's house.
Abbas' treatment of the plot is symbolic, and the ending is a good example of the mood of Sepehri's poem: "You turn to the lonely flower and stop two steps away from her." As a A poet with a strong spirit of rebellion, Sepehri is a strong opponent of Islamic formalism, and his poetry is like a mysterious enigma. On the surface, Sepehri's poem describes the process of a child looking for a friend's place to live, but can it actually be understood as a questioning of the existence of such a beautiful feeling in the world as "friendship"? In any case, Abbas revives the poet's soul, giving the film a certain mystical beauty.
Reality shattered the child's dream, and Ahmed traversed the winding mountain road four times without getting anywhere, and finally, brought him back to the starting point. He came home with his friend's workbook and wrote the homework for his friend, another way to save his friend from being punished by the teacher. What he did was actually deceived the teacher, which was of course a mistake, but he was also helpless, because of the rules of adult society. He handed the workbook back to his classmates at the "last minute", and when the teacher checked the two of them's work, he didn't realize that Nematzad's work was done by Ahmed for him. , the form of the work is more important than the content. Nematzad's workbook is exactly the same as Ahmed's, except that a small flower is added to Nematzad's workbook. memories of his difficult journey.
The adult society described in the film is a society that conforms to the rules, is lazy to think and is insensitive. They are only busy with their own business, and they are either unbelievable about Ahmed's behavior, or they do not take back what the child did out of pure desire. Instead of helping him find a friend's home, he took advantage of him. When Ahmed told his mother that he had taken a classmate's workbook by mistake, she replied "this is a common thing", and when he was eager to find a friend's home, his grandfather even deceived him to send him home To get cigarettes, in order to teach grandson to have rules (regardless of what the rules are, the rules themselves are the purpose). Perhaps even more heartbreaking was the behavior of the blacksmith, who mercilessly tore a page from the workbook of Ahmed's most sacred friend, and completely ignored the children's non-business-related questions. . In the film, only the enthusiastic old man helps the kind-hearted child, but such an old man can basically be said to be an ideal or a character that is passing away or has passed away. Whether it is his appearance or the way of "curtain call" clearly shows that at this point.
From the point of view of an adult society, Ahmed may "mature" a lot after this journey, but this maturity may be at the expense of his children's pursuit of "truth, goodness and beauty". Although many of Abbas's films feature children as the protagonists, this does not mean that his films are children's films specially made for children. Instead, he reflects on adult society from the perspective of children, which causes adults to rethink certain issues. For example, adults always think that educating children is a matter of course, but they rarely think about whether they should also get some inspiration from children. Ahmed helping his friend with his homework was both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing was that he saved his friend from being punished by the teacher. The bad thing was that he deceived the teacher. In order not to cheat, you must be honest, but in society, especially in adult society, honesty sometimes does not get good results. When it comes to educating children about being honest, adults often tell their children the fable entitled "The Wolf is Coming". People only know to tell this fable from generation to generation, but they rarely think about such a question: Did the child in the fable really lie about the "military situation"? That day, the hungry wolves in the mountains may have really come, so the villagers came to the village with hoes and shotguns to prepare for battle, but as spiritual wolves, they went back to the wolf den after hearing the sound, because they knew , the consequences of coming to the village for food when people are on guard. The same is true for the second time. But by the third time, the adults no longer believed the child's words, and they no longer took precautions, so the wolves took advantage of the situation... Is the victim just the child? There is an old saying in China called "Tong Yan Wu Ji", adults can educate children in many ways, but I am afraid that they are not qualified to cultivate children's honesty and morality. In this regard, adults should read another fable, "The Emperor's New Clothes," which is as absurd as the adults in many of Abbas's films.
Abbas often takes an impromptu approach to filming, without a complete script before shooting, only a shooting outline. He likes to use scene-sequence shots. During the shooting process, he tries not to split the shots, and focuses on medium and close-up shots, and try not to use close-ups as much as possible, so that the actors can naturally express their real life status. He takes actor performance so seriously that some people say he is "actorist". Instead of letting the camera lead the actor, he arranged the camera based on the actor. Under normal circumstances, he does not tell the actor exactly how to act, but only prompts a general situation to use the actor's own imagination.
The two children in "Where Is My Friend's House" show natural childishness and innocent eyes like jewels, and their performances are the result of the director's unique guiding method. For example, in the first scene, there is a scene about Nematzad, who was crying when he was reprimanded by the teacher because he lost his workbook. Before shooting, the director reminded him that he accidentally broke an expensive plane last night. The Polaroid camera, and Ahmed's worried expression sitting next to Nematzad is the expression the director showed when he asked him to practice mental arithmetic. Abbas said: "If the characters need to feel scared, I try to make them really scared. I stress that everything has to be true, and artificial emotional reactions cannot be tolerated." It's a feature film after all, and every child knows it's a movie, but Abbas is good at inspiring the actors to act naturally, choosing the right time to shoot to get a real and natural picture. Abbas didn't let them read the pre-written lines, but just looked for appropriate feelings from the children's experiences. Abbas said: "When photographing children, only the camera acts, there is no other choice, and the same is true for non-professional actors."
As Abbas' famous work, "Where Is My Friend's House" already contains many elements of Abbas' films: the almost documentary realism, the excellent performance of non-professional actors, the humanitarian tone, the harshness of power figures Indirect accusations, etc., which are also common features in Iranian films in recent years. Speaking of the documentary style of Abbas' films, perhaps we should mention such an interesting fact: One day in 1993, Iranian TV broadcasted "Where Is My Friend's House" again. The next day, Abbas came to the Tehran airport because he went abroad. A staff member at the airport recognized him and told his colleague that he was the director of "Where Is My Friend's Home". The colleague said suspiciously: "Does this film have a director?" Because he felt that this film was as ordinary as everyday life, like what happened around him, Abbas thought this was the best compliment for his film.
Abbas's international success is set against the backdrop of the recent revival of Iranian cinema, and he is one of the key figures in the new Iranian cinema that began around 1970. As an Islamic country, Iran has long held a firm boycott of movies. Indeed, from 1900, when a photographer named Shah Mozafa Al-Din brought the film to the country, to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Islamic social activists have consistently blamed the film and its ill effects, even appearing The thing that burned down the movie theater. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first wave of new Iranian cinema began to appear, with the early exponents of Darush Mehai ("The Cow", 1968), followed by Aamir Nadri (The Runner, 1973), and Abbas Kiarostami (The Report, 1977). These new-generation directors rejected sex and violence and their over-reliance on Indian films (which were the main feature of popular cinema during the Pahlavi period), and instead advocated a new style of realism, the Italian neo-realist film in Iran at the time Widely released and highly regarded. Society at the time had begun to generally resent the bourgeois-esque imitation of American modernization, and the result was the creation of films with a strong social consciousness, leading to the return of Iranian cinema to national cultural traditions.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a turning point for a major change in Iranian cinema. After a brief post-revolutionary hiatus, new Iranian cinema saw a resurgence in the mid-80s. In order to ensure the prosperity of the post-revolutionary film industry, the new Islamic regime will no longer burn down theaters, but also reach a consensus on the establishment of national films, and take active steps to rationalize the film industry and support the production of local films. Cinema, once rejected as a frivolous superstructure, has been embraced as an integral part of the Islamic cultural infrastructure. Perhaps the most influential person within the government in the development of Iranian cinema was Mohammad Qatami, the founder of the "Iranian Spring" movement and later president of Iran. The ideas he advocated during his long tenure as Minister of Culture (1982-1993) have been brought into mainstream political life in Iran. The Farabi Film Foundation, established in 1983, began to manage the import of foreign films, and also began to provide tax-free and low-interest loans for film production in the country.
Although post-revolutionary Iranian films have already begun to appear at international film festivals, it was not until the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 that they really began to attract the attention of the world cinema, and the results can be said to be blockbuster. In 1988, Nasher Tagovai's "Colonel Korcid" won the Bronze Panther Award at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. The following year, Abbas' "Where Is My Friend's House" won the honor again. In 1990, the Pesaro Film Festival in Italy focused on the introduction of new Iranian films, and the result was a sudden uptick in Iranian films screened around the world. Many Iranian film directors left Iran during the 1979 revolution, but Abbas stayed at home, and it turns out that those film directors who left Iran were not as successful as those who stayed at home. Important contemporary Iranian directors include Mohsen Makmalbaf, Jafar Pahassi, Masood Jafali Yozani, Kianush Ayari, Prang Drak Sandheh, Lakstan Bani-Itmed, Nasai Tajiwai and many more. It is worth mentioning that Abbas spared no effort in supporting young film directors. He has edited and written scripts for many young directors. "Balloon" is the script written by Abbas for Jafar Pahasi, who was his assistant director. Some people even think that Abbas plays the role of "Godfather" in the contemporary Iranian film industry.
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