Iranian cinema - is it overrated?
casioc...@gmail.com
A few months ago I watched Kandahar, today I watched Kiarostami's
Close-Up. I have also watched a few other Iranian films.
How do I find it? Well, it tries. I'm yet to see an Iranian Ugetsu or
Onibaba. The films feel somewhat amateurish, pretentious and
moralising. Far too moralising for taste. I wish the moralism had been
more subtle. I'm all for humanism, but I think the Japanese masters did
it far better, it was almost subliminal. Also, the visual aspects of
the movies are somewhat poor. When I watch a classic Japanese film my
jaw drops several times from scenes of perfect composition, even in a
film as old as Tokyo Story. Not so with Iranian cinema, where it often
seems that photographic aspects are executed in an almost mechanical,
matter-of-fact fashion.
John Harkness
Comparing the new Iranian cinema with the Japanese cinema is unfair.
The great Japanese masters were part of a cinematic tradition going
back to the turn of the century, an film industry that had operated
for decades, and a long tradition of visual narrative in painting. Oh,
and those films aren't cheap.
The Iranians are, in essence, inventing cinema as they go, with no
money and largely non-professional crews and casts. I was going to
suggest Italian neo-realism as a better comparison, except that
Rossellini, DeSica and Visconti were experienced film industry
veterans before they started.
The "humanist" social criticisminJapanese cinema, much of it in
response to war-time militarism and post-war materialism is not at all
the same as the "humanist" social perspective of Iranian cinema,where
social criticsim can get the filmmaker banned or jailed.
I'm not a great fan of the Iranian cinema -- they get a critical free
ride at film festivals, simply by being the least "hollywood" cinema
there is
You're criticism of the Iranians seems to be that they're not as good
as the classical Japanese cinema, which is blaming them for not being
something they're not even attempting to do.
John Harkness
moviePig
casioc...@gmail.com wrote:
Sure it's overrated... by somebody somewhere. But, speaking as someone
who's hardly a student of film cultures, and who's satisfied by finding
yet another viewpoint that's neither trivial nor inaccessible... Iranian
cinema suits me in that regard probably more often than Hollywood does
(percentage-wise). And, yes, it probably owes to Iranian culture...
E.g., I quite enjoyed both the super-sentimental THE COLOR OF PARADISE
and the austerely peripatetic SECRET BALLOT... and afaics it's their
Iranian-ness that keeps them from being respectively mawkish or dull.
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end the blacklist against henry williamson's chronicles of ancient sunlight. where can i order the whole set?
ambiguous, multi-faceted, and ironic than japanese humanist movies of
the 50s. now, there are more populist fare among iranian films but
your best kiarostami film is far less sentimental--if at all--than the
humanist films of kurosawa, mizoguchi, ozu, and others.
of course in terms of film mastery, the jappers have almost no peers.
but, iranian film is not so much about grandiose filmmaking but smart
thoughtful personal filmmaking tackling the issues of day-to-day life
in iran, exploring the possibility of individuality in an society whose
official culture is collective, and exposing the neuroses in a world
that is smothered by banal theocratic spiritualism.
compared to the japper cinema, iranian films offer little in the way of
catharsis or climax--happy or tragic. rather, they remind us that life
is a constant flow whose few waves are captured by cinematicians.
the films of the great masters--kurosawa, fellini, kubrick--offered a
vision of life or the world that challenged the real world itself.
but, iranian films always remind us--like documentaries--that they are
modest records of a far more complex and grander thing called society,
people, history, politics, culture, etc. it's not the cinema of santa
but that of elves who've realized santa doesn't exist.
casioc...@gmail.com
Without meaning to argue, I think it was reasonable in part at least to
compare them to the Japanese since that's the main non-Western humanist
cinematic standard. I agree with the thoughtful poster in this thread
who said that Iranian cinema seems more personal and more modest,
day-to-day in effort and issues. This may excuse, but i don't think it
invalidates my point of criticism. I just don't find it masterful
enough. Again, that they've not had a long cinematic tradition, I'm not
quite sure of that considering that some of them have made movies for
decades now, and my criticism relates to the basic alphabet of
filmmaking, stuff that even I know(!), that's still an excuse, not an
invalidation.
Take Ikiru for example, that restaurant scene, with the poor girl
contrasted with the rich kids behind behind him in the frame, with the
old man's terminal pessimism constrasted with the cheerful young crowd
behind him in the frame, that's not an issue of budget, that's an issue
of mind. In Kiarostami's Close-Up there was the scene with the can
rolling down the path, though I thought it was observed for far too
long for the abstraction to endure, though when the journalist kicked
it in his enthausiastic running I thought that was more telling and
apt. Yes, there are some nice touches in Iranian cinema, but they feel
a little ad-hoc, and uneven. They don't feel masterful.
John Harkness
>
>Take Ikiru for example, that restaurant scene, with the poor girl
>contrasted with the rich kids behind behind him in the frame, with the
>old man's terminal pessimism constrasted with the cheerful young crowd
>behind him in the frame, that's not an issue of budget, that's an issue
>of mind. In Kiarostami's Close-Up there was the scene with the can
>rolling down the path, though I thought it was observed for far too
>long for the abstraction to endure, though when the journalist kicked
>it in his enthausiastic running I thought that was more telling and
>apt. Yes, there are some nice touches in Iranian cinema, but they feel
>a little ad-hoc, and uneven. They don't feel masterful.
You're looking for something that isn't there. And, indeed, is not
even aspired to.
Come to think of it, exactly where in today's cinema do you find that
sort of classical "masterful" filmmaking?
It's not that the Iranians aren't making films like the Japanese were
40 and 50 years ago. The Japanese aren't making films like that any
more.
It's rather like hating American film because it doesn't measure up to
the films that William Wyler was making in the 40s.
Ad hoc is actually good descriptor for the Iranian cinema -- every
film is a one off, it's completely ad hoc. They don't have an
industrial infrastructure to feed.
John Harkness
casioc...@gmail.com
Interestingly, I'm watching Through the Olive Trees. I'm liking this
movie a lot more. In fact, I'm admiring it. It's a beautiful movie.
It's much more even in technique and treatment. It's mature.