Like De Sica, Kiarostami includes in his films the interruptions, detours, and wrinkles of everyday
life experience. They are not “clean” in the Hollywood way. Compare the smooth, easy conveying of
emotion in Titanic, Crazy Rich Asians, The Pursuit of Happyness, etc to the roughness of, for example,
Where Is the Friend’s House, where Ahmad’s soft voice often goes unresponded to; a chicken flies onto
a boy’s head; a cow takes center stage for several moments during Ahmad’s search; a classroom door
refuses to stay closed; a teacher’s lecture about being on time is interrupted by a boy who walks in
late; the night wind suddenly blows a door open. In these little ways, Kiarostami brings the mess and
mystery of the world into his story.
It is important to note that this “pragmatic” style is not simply a celebration of randomness for its
own sake. The pauses, tonal swerves (and all our by-now-familiar Ray Carney terms) free
Kiarostami’s themes—old vs. new doors; living in the village vs. living in the city; the slowness of the
elderly vs. the hurrying of the young; harsh attitudes about how children should be raised vs. the
mildness of the children themselves—from intellectual abstractions and place them in the roughness
of the physical world.
Prep Work:
1. Choose one of the three assigned Kiarostami films and write a concise, complete 2-3 sentence
summary of it.
2. Make a list of all the wrinkles, digressions, and strangenesses that you find in the film. Write
about only one film, though you are welcome to briefly weave in relevant examples from the
other films. The more effort you put into this list, the stronger your essay will be. Organize
this list into three sections:—those from the early, middle, and later part of the film.
