[custom_adv] Before his untimely death in 2016, Abbas Kiarostami was considered by many to be among the world’s greatest living filmmakers. First praised by Akira Kurosawa and Jean-Luc Godard, he later received acclaim from Martin Scorsese, Michael Haneke, Werner Herzog and many, many more. [custom_adv] Yet for all his many awards, Kiarostami never became well known beyond the cinephile circuit. His work was too idiosyncratic, too restlessly experimental, too different from the mainstream to reach a wider audience. [custom_adv] Not that his films are obscure or difficult to follow. Indeed, most deal with recognisably ‘ordinary’ characters (usually played by non-professionals) in recognisably ‘ordinary’ situations. Their storylines are simple and easy to follow. Yet it can take two or three encounters with Kiarostami’s work before it’s possible to get a good grasp on what he was up to. [custom_adv] The problems for some are the pace and tone of his films. If you’re used to the wham-bam cutting and heightened characterisation and narrative tropes favoured by Hollywood and other populist cinemas, Kiarostami’s quieter, more quizzical and contemplative approach to storytelling may take some getting used to. [custom_adv] Still, even for ‘arthouse’ aficionados, the Iranian’s films can initially seem… well, a little odd.That’s because Kiarostami – an important poet and photographer, besides being a writer-director – really did see things differently from most of us. [custom_adv] He would look at things more patiently and from a different perspective, asking different questions about the world and himself. Moreover, he was not a cinephile: he had no interest whatsoever in film as industrial entertainment, and never made a movie that could be categorised according to conventional genres. [custom_adv] What drove him to make the films he did was not other movies but life itself – that and the countless ideas constantly circulating in his profoundly curious and highly imaginative mind. [custom_adv] So what characterises a Kiarostami film? Well, most of them are about individuals simply trying to gain a better understanding how the world works and find their place in it, to negotiate a reasonable way of getting on with other people, to do the right thing… (Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of his earliest films are about children.)
