24 Frames

Abbas Kiarostami was probably Iran's most famous director ever. He died in 2016, right after completing the experimental "24 Frames". This movie features several scenes - many of them containing animals, snow or water - simply depicted as their own free-standing stories. No dialogue except for music, and no people except those who pass by. Characteristic of Kiarostami's frequent blending of simplicity and complexity, as well as his common theme of life and death. Like Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, he was a director who revolutionized cinema.

This movie will not be for everyone. The absence of narrative and the single shots test your attention span. But if you want to see what a movie can be at its best, then this will be the film for you.

"I always wonder to what extent the artist aims to depict the reality of a scene. Painters capture only one frame of reality and nothing before or after it.

For "24 Frames" I started with famous paintings but then switched to photos I had taken through the years. I included about four and a half minutes of what I imagined might have taken place before or after each image that I had captured"

Abbas Kiarostami

24 Frames is an experimental film and was the final film of the Iranian legend "Abbas Kiarostami" which was released after his death in 2017. Those of you, who have seen his work, you may know him that he was a film-maker, photographer, and philosopher and this film was the final and last stroke of his mastery combined with all the metaphors of his personality and aura.

In this review, I will embark on personal exploration, as I've watched this film with my mother and for us, it was a one way trip to an art gallery, we both amazed and relished on the aspects and possible themes of all the "24 Frames". Throughout the film, I had an endless discussion with my mother, we detailed and professed every minute scene of this film, I can't relate you the elation I felt. There were 24 photographs, no characters, no dialogues, and yet we were mysterious about the frames, and happily, every frame ended with a sense of mediating, revealing something unique about this life and the world.

It's an open invitation to a free webinar for the distressed soul to enjoin on a meditation which brings prosperity and peace to your life,

an open invitation to an art gallery which gives you the perception of what happens before a photograph taken,

an open invitation to art students to let them learn the art and craft of filmography,

or an open call for people who are observant and deep about nature and surroundings.

It's a simple and unique film, which has the power to entangle your intellect and makes you think about small things, birds, ocean, places. As Rumi Said, "Silence is the best Alchemy", this film is class, which taught you to learn the language of silence and to enjoy life.

If you love myths, philosophy, art, and literature then "24 Frames" is the right door to bang in, and if you're a modern geek with superheroes and Nolan stuff, It would be a boring frame of life.

'24 Frames' is one of those films that, in retrospect, is said to be a testament of a great director. There are enough arguments in favor of this categorization, including the final frame or scene in which we have on the screen the image of another screen in which the end of a classic film unfolds, including the magical 'The End'. And yet, even though Abbas Kiarostami was 76 years old when he filmed '24 Frames', I don't think that his intention was to create a testament film. This film radiates search and exploration of new ways of artistic expression. Far from being some 'last famous words', it seems more like a mid-career film of an artist in constant search. Returning to some of the tools he had used many decades before, at the beginning of his journey as an artist, the Iranian director combines them with the most advanced techniques of animation and digital image processing. A complete and versatile artist, Abbas Kiarostami has created in '24 Frames' a work of art that defies categorization. Personally, I confess that I have never been able to fully understand what the boundaries are between cinematography as art and video art. '24 Frames' seems to belong to both and many other fields of art. Watching it is a spiritual experience.

24 is a magic number in cinematography. 24 frames per second was the standard for classic projectors. The day has 24 hours and in the film time is one of the main subjects. Abbas Kiarostami constructed his work as a sequence of 24 sequences, each 4 and a half minutes long. Fixed, classic forms were one of the aesthetic obsessions of the creator who was, among many others, a creator of haikus. The first frame starts from a famous painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 'Hunters in the Snow'. With the help of computer animation, portions of the painting wake up one by one. The soundtrack also comes to life placing the painting into its natural and period context. What was a snapshot of a single moment in time becomes a moment in a sequence of the passage of time. Similar patterns will be present in the following frames, but the starting points are photos created by the author. In its early versions '24 Frames' was supposed to be a sequence of reflections on art starting from famous paintings, as in the first frame, but due to copyright reasons Kiarostami had to change his strategy and used his own creations from albums of still photography, an artistic field that he had practiced at the beginning of his artistic journey.

'24 Frames' is a very different viewing experience than a traditional film. There is no plot, no human characters. Kiarostami, the filmmaker who excelled in creating heroes drawn from reality and who built psychologists full of credibility and humanity for them, places his human silhouettes - when they appear - on an equal level with those of animals, plants, landscape items. One can also interpret this attitude as an expression of the idea that we humans are only a part of an endless Universe, and not necessarily the center of it. The film seems more like a collection of philosophical essays or poems. Each of the frames has an aesthetic value in itself, but they also tell a lot about the connection between the creator and the artistic objects resulting from his imagination, about nature and its observation. The world in the frames is often seen through the geometry of a window, and in a few cases transparent but material screens or windows separate the viewer from the nature beyond. A nature that, let's not forget, is largely artificial, the result of the author's thinking in relation to the context of the still images that represent the starting points of each frame.

The viewer who dares to see '24 Frames' must know (and if he doesn't know, he will find out after the first frames) that this is not an ordinary entertainment film. The reward will come from the beauty and depth of cinematic thought and the boldness of the author's artistic exploration, which he becomes witness of. An unforgettable artistic experience.

I can't review this like a typical movie, because it's not a typical movie. This is an experimental art film, so there are two questions; Does this movie achieve what it set out to do? and How did it affect me?

I do believe it achieved what it wanted to, It's beautiful and an interesting idea (seeing what could happen before and after a photograph).

It mostly kept my interest due to the beauty of the shots and what the subjects are doing within the shot. This is definitely a great background movie to have on at a casual party similar to a music streaming channel.

The only failings come with some the the effects, certain things feel and look worse than others.

I would recommend it if you want to see something calming and are interested in the premise. It's a decent watch.

Beautiful film and some frames are striking. It is slow and would take peserverance to sit till the end. I am surprised it'd be shown in HK cinemas which are usually quite commercial - probably because of his big name. I fell asleep from 11-16th frame, then again the last two frames. But no audience left the cinema which I find quite amusing.

I wouldn't say it's a great film. At many points I was a bit disappointed at how rough the details were made...it was like seeing a large installation work of a respectfulartost in a gallery, but noticing execution flaws here and there.

It would not have been shown in hk cinemas or received that many awards, if it were a film by a new film maker.

It's experimental but I can hardly describe it as a good film. I'd not recommend t to friends. Sorry.