Where Is The Friend's House?

Abbas Kiarostami - 1987
Wonderful long takes. Patient build up of frustration, and bursts of stupid brutality. But we have that other's P.O.V. It's not right to say Kiarostami is a neo-realist, but if he is, it's in this film. Wonderful use of landscape. Shots of hills with hills as 80% of frame and runner along the top. I criticised this framing as not conveying a great sense of expanse in 'Meek's Cutoff', arguing that 'Earth' showed low a low plain and much sky gave great sense of sense. Here Kiarostami is not trying to show a great space; but a locale that is almost circular, the boy finds that who he is looking for is in fact where he just came from, Koker....
Level of detail with not wordy language. Focus on looker before looked, but we do eventually get the eyline matches. Pictoral beauty, never self-consciousness, of just making the image that little bit more complex. A dark alley behind, a blue door. That is beauty.
Sense of mild absurdity in repetion and zigzagging road (found in 'And Life Goes On...' and 'The Wind...' also. Yet here we are engaged in a conversation and dialogue that is not strongly pedagogic. We are asked to see what is happening, and we learn to understand, the closer shots of the boy and the longer takes of the houses and streets. Film that poses questions. Revelatory ending, though not 'complete'. Again, compromising oneself, finding one's ideals indaequate, in the search? But never self-obsessed; a place. The old men are cruel, but they have half a point. Abstract ideas are expressed, but don't capture this film. What is freedom? Running away from your mother, to find the friend's house, to help to the friend.