Und das Leben geht weiter

Life and Nothing More (1992, dir. Abbas Kiarostami) What is so unusual about Kiarostami's films? They seem to to inhabit a world that is so ordinary, mundane even, and yet they are lent a sense of wonder as well. The simplicity of action and story is undermined by circumstances that reveal the courage that it takes just in order to live. Here a man and his son are driving to Koker, a town which has been devastated by the Iranian earthquake. Along the way they come across people who are carrying their belongings, food supplies, heaters, etc. after having lost everything. They stop to ask for directions. One woman can't help them, breaks out in tears, "I've lost 16 people" The man can only say, "May god grant you forbearance." There is no easy sentimentalism. Here life goes on for those that survive in spite of it all. There is still the need to fill ones life with love and joy and momentary pleasure. One man talks of his plan to get married in his hometown, despite the disaster. The son talks to his friend about watching a soccer game. He becomes terrifically excited by the building of an antenna at one of the nearby villages which will allow him to watch the game. You see none of the horrific footage of mangled bodies and uncontrollably hysterical victims that we usually associate with natural disasters. You only see people who have experienced tragedy, but continue to live and endure.

After the 1990 earthquake in Iran that killed over 30,000 people, Kiarostami went to search for the stars of his previous film "Where Is the Friend's Home?". This film is a semi-fictional work based on these events, shot in a documentary-style. It shows a director (played by Farhad Kheradmand) on this journey through the country in the aftermath of the earthquake.

While this is a really beautiful film with a rather simple plot, there is something a bit more than that going on. Of course, it also has something of a "meta" feel because the film references another film, thus being both that film's sequel, but also outside of it in a way.

For Americans, the film also offers a very human look at tragedy. For reasons not entirely clear to me, Iran is seen as America's "enemy". This is foolish, given that the problem is the government and not actually the Iranian people. This film makes that perfectly clear, with some of the most innocent, caring folks you would ever hope to meet. Whatever caricature we are supposed to have in mind about Iran, you will not find it here.

There is a long intro before the title. A film director and his son are shown driving in a small beat-up car to northern Iran soon after the 1990 earthquake. When the car enters a long tunnel, the camera keeps rolling and on the darken screen the titles finally appear.

The film director is nominally Kiarostami, but played by an actor. Typical for his films, the documentary genre blurs with the fictional account. The devastation that we see from the moving car is real, though the lamentations we witness are probably staged, which does not diminish the sense of suffering of the affected local communities.

The impetus of this travelogue through a torn landscape is to locate at least one of the kids that was his main character in one of his previous films, "Khaneh-je doost kojast?". That quest is the director's central preoccupation, so much so he does not recognize another boy, who he gives a lift to, that had a secondary role in that film. If you see the aforementioned film, you will clearly remember the face.

The quest is made difficult by roads that have been gutted or blocked by rock and earth slides, and by the steep mountainous terrain of his goal, the small town of Koker. As he gets tantalizing close, we root for him.

The way the film ends may be disappointing to some, but I found that it matched the title of the film, "And Life Goes On". For the survivors of the earthquake there is mourning for the dead, but at the same time the 1990 World Soccer Cup is going on. What team will make it to the final? While houses have to be rebuilt, it is also important that TV antennas be lifted so that all can see the games in the evening. The director will make more films but now he is concerned about the well-being of that child actor. So life goes on, the quest must go on. There is no ending.

Abbas speaks his own language, he's just on another level. He is interested in human relations and deeper messages about his culture, similar to Ozu and that's why I love him. He died too soon, RIP.

This movie has the realistic feel of a documentary although I wouldn't call it a faux documentary because there is no pretension that it is a mock-up. It has the feel of a documentary and if you didn't know any better, you could quite reasonably conclude that it was. I would say that it is in the tradition of the Bicycle Thief or other classics of the Neo- Realist genre in which life proceeds at a leisurely pace and multiple quotidian events and regular people ground the plot as realistically as possible.

In this film, an Iranian director (Farah Kheradmand), representing Kiarostami, travels with his son (Buba Bayour) to small town Koker in the remote mountains of Iran to find a child actor who had been in his most recent movie and about whom he worried in the wake of a strong earthquake. Clearly there is some overlap with real life events as there was a major earthquake in Iran in 1990 and one of the stars of Kiarostami's previous movies ("Where Is The Friend's Home?") lived in this area. The pace of the movie, the everyday transactions, and the humans' doggedness in the face of tragedy indicate Kiarostami's love for people and thoughtfulness as a director.

Throughout the movie, we see slices of life. We see a young couple getting married even on a day when some of their relatives die, explaining that they thought they should continue, particularly on such a sad day. We see a man lugging heavy belongings to help out his family. We see a young Buba, with the wisdom of an old man, heartbreakingly consoling a woman who has lost one of her daughters. We see a little baby crying and the director quickly consoling the baby. One of these incidents in and of itself would be insignificant, but they are linked together in such numbers that the collective weight of the movie stays with you and cannot be shaken. Together, such a collection of events comprise the guts and the essence of life. The humble dignity of the characters will not be forgotten easily.