Hamsarayan

The second half made me laugh happily.

This movie reminded me of my grandparents, and of many funny stories I witnessed or heard about people in old age, and their own unique naivety, clumsiness and sloth. But all these negative traits give a sweet touch to a character, especially when you look back with an open minded nostalgia, just like the following notes in a piece change the whole feeling the song gave you until that moment.

And this is what I see Kiarostami putting into frame. Also, the playful solution the children found for the situation grandpa put them in shows another world alomost apart from the first one, that of the children. But it's a curious thing to notice how the children and the elderly have a peculiar relationship among each-other.

Where I'm from they say "Old age is like childhood."

One of my favorites by Kiarostami.

A deaf grandfather alone in the house, turns off his hearing aid to get away from noise. The day goes by and he has not turned on his hearing aid, so doesn't hear his granddaughter at the door below. A crowd assembles (the chorus of the title) to join in yelling up to the grandfather.

Sweet story. Is it a political or generational metaphor, or both?

Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami (based on a story by Mohammad Javad Kahnamoie.) Cinematographer: A.R. Zarindast Sound: Ahmad Asgari, Changiz Sayad. Asst. Dir: Naser Zera'ati. Cast: Yusef Moqaddam, Ali Asgari, Teymur and children from Rasht.

also: Why is it so hard to find foreign short films, no matter how amazing and beautiful.

This is one of Abbas Kiarostami's finest short works. With the minimum of elements and every pound of sensibility and grace he could afford, the Iranian master shot a precious and brief manifest of some things really worth in life. You can see Víctor Erice's "The spirit of the beehive" (1973) - shot ten year before, and surely well known by Kiarostami -and maybe some curious Raymond Depardon's children in between the warm frames of this tiny piece that everyone who wants to be a director must see. The metaphor is clear and simple: we need human "touch" to be human. Don't miss it and if you have the opportunity to see it, please recommend it.

Hamsarayan (The Chorus), made in 1982, 17 minutes long. It calls in mind all later movies of Kiarostami, and that is because you'll find here some of those cinematic ideas defining what makes him unique.

What's the point in Hamsarayan? That's difficult to grasp, because, like all Kiarostami's works, this movie is simple and complex in the same time. The plot evolves completely by random, changing course each time a new situation is captured. At the beginning of the story Kiarostami seems even to not know the main character. An old man appears suddenly and the focus passes on him. He's walking through a market examining all kind of stuff, and taking out from his ear the hearing device every now and then. Will the focus move to that noisy guy praising his goods? No, Kiarostami stays the course with the old guy, making him to take out again his hearing device. And the story goes on, the little girls shouting, while the old man is drinking a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, etc. What's the point? I think the point is that the plot is deceptive. Actually there is no plot. Kiarostami follows a daily chain of random events with random personages, looking for the meaning, considering that each fact of life should have a meaning. And inviting us to follow the chain of images and to discover their meaning together with him.

This is in all his movies, from his early ones (like this Hamsarayan), up to Ten, and then to Five, where the plot is radically thrown away. Each of his movies is just that: a journey, where facts and personages appear on their own will. A journey Kiarostami makes to encounter facts and personages, and to discover meaning. And we, spectators, are invited to participate to the effort of discovery. The director gives total freedom to the facts and personages, he gives also freedom to us, in our own search for meaning.

Well, we can also find here, in Hamsarayan, an idea that Kiarostami develops in his 10 on Ten: the rapport between sound and image; and possibly many other ideas.

But you will ask me what's the meaning discovered in this movie? It's the smile of the grandpa in the last image!