Abbas Kiarostami - 1991
It's a quantative rather than a qualitative leap, but the reflexivity here is obviosuly dialled up. Even the shots themselves are takes through interior frames of windows and car doors.
The first concerted use I have seen by Kiarostami of fixed camera positions, especially inside cars. And the tracks this entails, sound from offscreen, through the landscape. Often stick in the car as out fellow-journeyeres head out.
Ethical questions posed, but not just to be gaped at. Man is doing a good thing, but is it a selfish one? Slightly more likeable than other car-owners in 'Taste of Cherry' and 'The Wind...'. Likeability not really the point.
Are we really getting to know these people? If cinema can, this is it. Gently giving time, but not superfluosly covering over with smoothness. Slightly harsh questions. A catalogue of the earthquake, it surely must be O.K. to film it...? Certain humour in the self-reflexivity.
Sudden moments in Kiarostami, often of tenderness (the married man...) or brutality (hitchhiker ignored; will the car go back) that seem to open up a world of understanding. Never uncurious; world cup chat is genuinely funny in itself, bizarre for the situation, but true as well; this isn't sentimentlised provincialism. People trying to love, to do more than that, live a good life. We can't agree with what they say, we can judge their homilies as inferiro, or we can realise that what they're saying is kind of true. Deeply intelligent filmaking, not requiring convoltued symbolism.
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