The Experience [1973]

 Abbas Kiarostami’s gently observational feature-length debut The Experience – produced by the filmmaking department of ‘Centre for the Intellectual Development of Child and Adolescent’ (“Kanoon”) that he’d helped found – was informed by the neorealist form, Iran’s social realist milieu, and Kiarostami’s deep empathy for nonconformist kids and adolescents living in the margins, for a tender, impish and poetic subversion of the ‘poor boy falls for rich girl’ trope. Gorgeously photographed in richly composed B/W frames, with images often shot through glass panes which gave them a subtly voyeuristic quality, we follow a day and a half in the life of an impoverished teenager whose dreams add a sliver of hope and escapist joys into his tough Dickensian existence. The orphaned Mamad works as a lowly factotum in a photography studio – serving tea, brooming the floors, assisting with developing the negatives – where he also sleeps at night. Though constantly scolded by his middle-aged employer, more so when he indulges in acts of pubescent naughtiness by creating a cut-out from a signboard featuring an attractive model, he keeps getting drawn towards small acts of playfulness and rebellion. He’s also, in the meantime, become enamoured with a lovely girl slightly older to him; she’s far beyond his social station, but that doesn’t stop him from blushing at her sight, or day-dreaming about her, or crafting a little plan to get closer to her. He's therefore the quintessential Kiarostami kid who’ll indulge in bolder and more reckless displays of mischief and disobedience in the magnificent run of films that he’d make featuring young actors. This delicately-strung work, incidentally, was nearly devoid of any dialogues, which made it all the more affecting, meditative and impressionistic.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Drama/Social Drama

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

Ten [2002]

 Ten – Abbas Kiarostami’s first film shot entirely in digital – formed a clear companion piece to his much-lauded Taste of Cherry from a structural standpoint, as both films comprised only of conversations inside a moving car between a person driving the vehicle and various people joining in the front passenger’s seat, and eschewed conventional narrative arcs in favour of fly-on-the-wall approaches. However, while the earlier film was a sombre dive into existential inquiries and moral quandaries, the latter may well remain the Iranian maestro’s sharpest political expression, as well as his most radically stripped-down tableaux. This engrossing and episodic docufiction set in Tehran – a chamber drama, if you will, in how it’s rigorously confined within a car and shot using two dashboard-mounted cameras – captured, through ten vignettes, the interactions between a beautiful, confident and fiercely modern woman (played with irresistible self-assurance by Mania Akbari), who’s always seen driving, and five different passengers, viz. her petulant son (played by Akbari’s real-life child Amina Maher) who’s angry with her for having divorced his father, her elder sister facing marital crisis, a delicate young woman jilted by her fiancé, a prostitute who uninhibitedly shares her opinions on the hypocrisy of men and idiocy of their wives, and a religious old woman. Kiarstoma’s belated answer to an Iranian critic’s question to him on the possibility of making films on independent and working Iranian women – repurposed from an earlier idea of a psychologist conducting her sessions in a car on account of renovations at her workplace – blurred the lines between private and public spaces through these nakedly intimate and free-flowing conversations that touched upon patriarchal norms, gender identities, cultural mores, societal impositions, and feminist assertions.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Drama/Road Movie/Experimental Film

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

Taste of Cherry [1997]

 While Abbas Kiarostami’s films evolved over two broad phases –exuberant early films centred on gently rebellious kids and teenagers living in the margins, and engrossing subsequent ones revolving around cerebral middle-aged outsiders – three facets remained largely intact. His protagonists were nearly always moving, fiction and non-fiction elements would frequently bleed into each other, and his impish love for formal subversions. All were on display in Taste of Cherry, the first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or. The entire length of this minimalist, melancholic and quietly moving work involved Mr. Badii (portrayed with stoic restraint by Homayoun Ershadi, who was discovered by Kiarostami at a traffic jam) driving his Range Rover through alternately grubby and ravishing landscapes outside Tehran over a single day. With no backstory on offer, all we know is that he’s suffering from a great despair and wants to commit suicide; however, as that’s forbidden by Islam, he’s looking at paying for someone’s services to check if his act has been successful, and to then bury him at his chosen spot. Over the course of the meandering roads and discursive narrative, he converses with three individuals who provide very different responses to his ask – a Kurdish teenager, who’s just joined the army, flees in fear; an Afghan seminarist tries reasoning, before declining; and a ageing Turkish taxidermist (Abdolrahman Bagheri), who understands Badii’s existential crisis and reluctantly accepts the job, but tries dissuading him through a blend of philosophical reflections and storytelling. Stunningly shot with a mix of wide-angled shots and close-ups, and bereft of non-diagetic sounds, the film ended with a remarkable rupture of the fourth wall, with low-fi camcorder accompanied by a Louis Armstrong score.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of the film can be found here.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Philosophical Drama/Road Movie

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992]

 David Lynch’s arresting prequel to Twin Peaks – greenlighted after the show was cancelled, and which massively polarized everyone upon its release – couldn’t have been more radically different from the television series. While the first two seasons were splashed with cute Americana, despite the outrageous events that unfolded, the film was edgy, visceral, grungy, nightmarish and enthralling. The two together, consequently, reminded me of three of his films – Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive – in how they’d juxtaposed idyllic exteriors with grotesque underbellies. The film, which evoked a suburban purgatory through disturbing depictions of abuse behind closed doors and monsters inside the closets, took the viewers into the turbulent life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) leading to her vicious murder that the series began with. It, incidentally, kicked-off with a MacGuffin involving two FBI Agents – Chester (songwriter Chris Isaak) and Sam (Kiefer Sutherland) – investigating Teresa Banks’ brutal murder that the show had referred to. The narrative, subsequently, dove into the final seven days of Laura – a beautiful high-school student who everyone admires, but whose secret double life is spiralling out of control, exacerbated by the assaults she’s been facing at the hands of her obsessive father Leland (Ray Wise) who’s possessed by the malevolent spirit of Bob, cocaine addiction, wilful prostitution, self-destructiveness and intense trauma – leading ultimately to her tragic end. The film’s most gripping sequence took place in a grimy underground pub – accompanied by a loud, jangling and addictive score – where the tortured heroine, along with her best friend Dona (Moira Kelly, replacing Lara Flynn Boyle who didn’t reprise her role) are swept into a netherworld where three leery middle-aged men take advantage of the two underaged girls.

Director: David Lynch

Genre: Horror/Psychological Thriller/Crime/Mystery

Language: English

Country: US

Twin Peaks [1990-91, 2017]

 Twin Peaks – the surrealist, grisly, horror, mystery, campy and goofy soap opera that David Lynch co-created with Mark Frost – was a surprise hit when it premiered in 1990, and became a pop-culture phenomenon with a cult following despite its eccentric, outlandish and bizarre plot elements. The first season – arguably the highest-point in the series – opened with the murdered body of the beautiful but troubled high school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the tranquil town of Twin Peaks. It followed, on one hand, the murder investigation led by the incorrigibly optimistic and doggedly persuasive FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) supported by the local Sheriff, and on the other, the private affairs, sly ploys and nefarious machinations of the town’s offbeat residents which included corrupt businessmen, impassive cops, mad psychiatrists, punks, drifters, and striking damsels (Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, and Joan Chen), along with teasing forays into alternate realms. The longer second season concluded the investigation, and then took the plot forward. With the broader narrative scope, it succeeded in being more playful, madcap and adventurous, while also stepping the gas too much on occasions on silly humour and psychedelic excesses. Though the second season ended on a cliffhanger note, and Lynch followed it immediately with the gripping prequel feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, it was a whopping 2 ½ decades before a much-awaited third season finally arrived. Largely bereft of the campy Americana and soap opera elements of the earlier seasons, this alternately arresting, ingenious and exasperating season – filled with multiple parallel plots, interludes and detours, alongside both returning and new cast members – took the narrative forward, backwards and sideways into a bonkers, mind-bending trip.

Director: David Lynch

Genre: Series/Crime/Mystery/Comedy/Horror/Thriller/Drama

Language: English

Country: US

The Godfather Part II [1974]

 The Godfather wasn’t just scintillating cinema, it was a smash hit too. Francis Ford Coppola, consequently, got a free-hand for the follow-up, and he expanded the tapestry into a breathtaking saga which was broader and richer, as well as darker and edgier. He leveraged unutilized sections from Mario Puzo’s titular novel covering the past – beginnings and rise of a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) – while simultaneously taking the principal narrative centred around Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) forward as he accelerates his chilling spiral – driven by the Machiavellian quad of power, capital, corruption and violence – which he’d embraced in the previous film. The second part, therefore, was both an adapted prequel and an original sequel backed by a sprawling script. While Vito’s journey was laced with warmth and was driven by memories of Sicily, familial loyalty, bonds he forged with fellow Italian-Americans, and street-smarts, making the flashback sections an elegiac immigration story, Micheal’s was colder and harsher as he displays a terrifying ability to outsmart his rivals and terminate anyone who offends him, propelled by his ruthless cunning and an absolute inability to forgive. Thus, as he battles the duplicitous Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) and antagonistic politicians, he also gets into shattering conflicts with his simple-minded elder brother Fredo (John Cazale), his profoundly disenchanted wife Kay (Diane Keaton), and hot-headed old-timer Frank (Michael V. Gazzo). While the film – aided by Nino Rota’s haunting score – abounded with stunning performances, Pacino’s stood out as one of devastating ferocity which made Michael’s character simultaneously arresting, volatile and diabolical; his interactions with Fredo were particularly unforgettable. The film, incidentally, also painted a captivating time-capsule of Cuba as it transitioned from Batista to Castro.

p.s. This is my latest revisit of this film. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Genre: Crime Drama/Gangster/Family Drama/Epic

Language: English/Sicilian

Country: US