Abbas Kiarostami: Master of Artistic Simplicity

Abbas Kiarostami: Master of Artistic Simplicity - I

"All artists imbibe, consciously or unconsciously, the lessons of past masters. But when a film maker's roots are strong, and when tradition is a living reality, outside influence are bound to dwindle and disappear and indigenous styles evolve." Satyajit Ray quoted for Kurosawa and holds unconditionally true for Kiarostami.

Words like fresh, reviving, philosophical, etc would merely be undermining Kiarostami's work. As a director, his approach is purely simplistic, unconventional and 'flowing'. I have seen three of his works - Close Up (1990), A taste of cherry (1997) and The wind will carry us (1999) and through these three films we observe a transition. A transition in directing styles, in what is being said & how is it said and a transition towards artistic perfection.

Opening with a conversation inside a car (as most of his film), we see, vaguely, some views of people on ongoing politics, their stereotypical notions, body language of government officials and some unanswered questions like why they aren't having a police vehicle, why the reporter is pursuing this, etc. Beautifully and dutifully Kiarostami has done the work of an artist of telling about the current society with bare minimum. We then see an arrest and still not sure who the central character is.

Done with very deep, sympathetic and understanding characterization, we see the truth of what happened accounted for, juxtaposed. A documentary told with vividness of a feature film, we discover the innocence of Sabzian in his fraudulence.

A complete analysis of these three films will be next.

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