NEW: Certified Copy [
Copie conforme] (Abbas Kiarostami, Italy/France)
OLD: Hallelujah I’m a Bum (Lewis Milestone, 1933)
WHY: It’s true that my guilty conscious had some effect on picking
Copie conforme,
though it was an outstanding film itself, needless of any guilty
conscious to be the criteria of a choice. I had some rough, and probably
unfair, judgments on Kiarostami’s films, after
The Wind Will Carry Us,
and in the shadow of post-June-2009 happenings in Iran these judgments
became harsher. But now, I can read the filmmaker’s thoughts more
clearly, because I know if he had made any film the way that people of
his country wanted he would now have his own share of
26 years. Of course, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has considered
Copie
unscreenable in Iran. But that doesn’t affect Kiarostami’s reputation,
in or out of his homeland. Inside, the usual bunch of opponents call him
a coward and a fake, and on the other side, many more find him one of
the few who can give them back a part of the lost honor of a nation. He
has his followers and protégés; not so strangely, none of them working
in Iran anymore, and of course some of them, like Jafar Panahi, do not
and will not work at all. But Kiarostami continues his cinematic
journey, this time in Italy, and makes organic films like they are part
of a change of the weather or any other natural occurrence. He is coming
from a country full of frustration, a country facing its biggest
troubles ever, but he is still focused on details (a kid’s notebook, a
hobo’s marriage proposition after a demolishing earthquake, drivers
driving Tehran street without showing any real life on those streets),
details that are not related clearly and directly to the problems. Does
he have any message for his own people? The answer is hardly a yes, but
maybe his continuity is the message. Wouldn’t he be forgotten, like
many filmmakers with clear telegram-like messages before and after the
1979 revolution, if he had stopped being Kiarostami?
To fill the gap, to have another perspective rather than pleasant
landscape of Tuscany, to remember people are losing jobs, and to not
forget that not very far from now, after recent political/economical
changes in Kiarostami’s homeland, a new wave of poverty will sweep up
the nation, let’s watch Lewis Milestone’s masterpiece of the American
left,
Hallelujah I'm a Bum, about central park hobos and their
hopes and dreams during the big depression; a Milestone that shows us
(and Kiarostami) how can fantasy explain bitter reality. Juliette
Binoche is much like Al Jolson. In the end, they both are left alone
with undying hopes in hand, and tears in their eyes. Binoche and Jolson
are the integral of people in Iran, today.
