Nice to know Mohsen Makhmalbaf (top right) not only references Chaplin in his work, he directs like him too, acting out all the parts.
Thanks are due to Arthur S for pointing me in the direction of this week’s The Forgotten, a really special film that ought to be better known, or at least available.
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This entry was posted on October 21, 2010 at 10:13 am and is filed under FILM with tags Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mubi, Once Upon a Time... Cinema, The Daily Notebook, The Forgotten. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed
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October 21, 2010 at 10:39 am
Much obliged, David!
October 21, 2010 at 11:31 am
Tried to see this movie 15 years ago at the London Film Festival…but the single screening had long since sold out! It was a sensation with everyone who saw it and looked all set to hit the arthouse circuit, where it would invariably run and run…
So what happened? Nothing. The film promptly vanished from sight and nobody seems to know why. Maybe some political problems? Who knows?
October 21, 2010 at 8:05 pm
I guess maybe the time wasn’t quite right for Iranian cinema? At the moment, it often seems like we only have headspace for one Iranian cineaste, and Kiarostami has the job.
October 21, 2010 at 8:14 pm
My favourite Iranian film and what is considered by some to be the greatest of Iranian films is Forugh Farrokhzad’s THE HOUSE IS BLACK made in 1961. It’s a short film but it’s unlike anything made anywhere in the world.
Kiarostami on the other hand I find difficult, I’ll be seeing his latest film CERTIFIED COPY at the Mumbai Film Festival(which I will be blogging about after an extremely long absence). Of Makhmalbaf THE CYCLIST struck me literally as a bolt of hot fire. Every shot is filled with this restless energy.
October 21, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Mmmm. Now I’m off to look for The House is Black.
Shirin certainly presents marked difficulties, but they reactions I’ve come across to Certified Copy suggests that everybody seems to get something out of it, even if nobody is sure they understand it. Which intrigues me.
October 22, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I totally loved CERTIFIED COPY, which I didn’t expect to. Kiarostami had never appealed to me before. What’s more, I find Juliette Binoche supremely annoying in most of her films.
Yet this film held me spellbound, if only because its central situation was one I could relate to so closely. Two strangers share an intense and immediate attraction. Everyone around them assumes they’ve been a couple for years, even though they really don’t know each other at all. I’ve been there, and that’s exactly what it’s like!
October 22, 2010 at 2:56 pm
But IS that what’s happening? I’ve read other accounts which seem to interpret it differently.
October 22, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Well, as David W.’s companion at the screening in question, I must admit I don’t share his interpretation! It seemed to me that, as a result of the assumption made by a cafe owner that they are a married couple, she (the Juliette B. character) decides to behave as though they are. He slowly joins in the game and it moves on from there. I don’t think either that they share an immediate and equal attraction. She’s the protagonist; he just acquiesces – at least at the start.
It’s second-grade Kiarostami. Give me the earthquake trilogy anytime.
October 22, 2010 at 4:35 pm
I just felt the magnetism between them was so palpable, right from the beginning!
That’s largely down to the superb acting of Binoche (never thought I’d say that!) and William Shimmel (an opera singer in his ‘straight’ acting debut, who nonetheless acts JB off the screen).
Perhaps this film is a bit of an inkblot, and every viewer will see what he or she is predisposed to see in it. That may even be Kiarostami’s intention.