Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)

Farhad Kheradmand and Hossein Rezai in Through the Olive Trees

Cast: Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Farhad Kheradmand, Zarifeh Shiva, Hossein Rezai, Tahereh Ladanian, Hocine Redai, Zahra Nourouzi, Nosrat Bagheri, Azim Aziz Nia, Ostadvali Babaei, Ahmed Ahmed Poor, Babek Ahmed Poor. Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami. Cinematography: Hossein Jafarian, Farhad Saba. Production design: Abbas Kiarostami. Film editing: Abbas Kiarostami. Music: Amir Farshid Rahimian, Chema Rosas. 

Through the Olive Trees is the concluding film in what has become known as Abbas Kiarostami's "Koker trilogy," which is made up of the neorealistic Where Is My Friend's House? (1987), the semi-documentary And Life Goes On (1992), and this lyrical, pastoral, slyly comic work. It's possible to impose a variety of shapes on the trilogy as it moves from the simple narrative of the first film, made on the eve of the 1990 earthquake that devastated northern Iran, through the anxious quest for survivors of the cast of the first film that constitutes the middle film, and into a kind of post-disaster healing that centers on both the making of a film and one of its actors' nervous, intense courtship of a young woman, also an actor in the film. Through the Olive Trees also answers a question that was raised but never answered in And Life Goes On: Did the two boys who were the focus of Where Is My Friend's House survive the quake? But like most of the questions the third film deals with, the answer is oblique or obscure to the inattentive. In this case, it's a yes: The boys, Ahmed and Babek Ahmed Poor, appear in this film bringing potted geraniums to the set of the film that's being made in post-quake Koker. Kiarostami doesn't identify them as such, but leaves the recognition to viewers familiar with the first film. In fact, it's best to watch the trilogy as a whole, as Kiarostami manages to move actors and characters around among the three films. In Through the Olive Trees, the actor/character known as Farhad is the same actor, Farhad Kheradmand, who played the director in And Life Goes On. A different actor, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, plays the director in Through the Olive Trees. Sometimes we don't know whether we're watching actors performing in scenes for the film that's being made or the actual lives of the actors out of character -- in fact, the actors find it hard to separate the two. The third part of the trilogy is linked visually to the first by the zigzag path that people traverse to surmount the steep ridge that separates villages. And Through the Olive Trees links visually with And Life Goes On in that both films conclude with remarkable long-shot long takes in which characters from the film encounter each other at great distances from the camera. Taking the three films together, I think, only binds them into a whole masterwork -- an enigmatic, moving, frustrating, fascinating masterwork.   

And Life Goes On (Abbas Kiarostami, 1992)

And Life Goes On (Abbas Kiarostami, 1992)

Cast: Farhad Kheradmand, Buba Bayour, Hocine Rifahi, Ferhendeh Feydi, Mahrem Feydi, Bahrovz Aydini, Ziya Babai, Mohamed Hocinerouhi, Hocine Khadem, Maassouma Berouana, Mohammad Reza Parvaneh. Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami. Cinematography: Homayun Payvar. Film editing: Abbas Kiarostami, Changiz Sayad.

Nothing quite sums up And Life Goes On better than its final sequence. We have followed a film director and his young son on their journey into the earthquake-shattered north of Iran, where the director hopes to find out the fate of the boys who appeared in his earlier film, Where Is My Friend's House? After battling traffic clogged with heavy-equipment clearing the rubble, and being turned on roads closed by fissures that have opened into the earth or blocked by landslides, he finally finds the road that will take him to the village of Koker, where the film was made. Having been told that his aging automobile will have trouble making it up the steep hills ahead of him, the director passes up a man carrying a heavy burden who asks for a lift. And so we watch from the distant high vantage point of another hill as the car toils up the hill, fails to make it to the top, backs down and tries again, fails again and rolls back down to the bottom. He turns the car back into the direction he came from and drives off screen, just as the man carrying the burden enters the frame and begins his long walk up the hill. He makes it and turns the next corner in the zigzag road. Then the director's car reappears, and building up momentum, makes it to the top, where he picks up the man and continues their journey. It's one long beautiful take, and it encompasses the theme of endurance that is central to And Life Goes On. It's a fictionalized version of Kiarostami's own experience, with actors Farhad Kheradmand and Buba Bayour playing equivalents to Kiarostami and his son. As in many of Kiarostami's films, including Where Is My Friend's House?*, most of the actors are non-professionals, genuine and rough-edged. The suffering of the survivors, almost all of whom have lost one or more family members, is subordinated to their stubborn determination to stay alive, perhaps best demonstrated by a pair of newlyweds whose wedding was interrupted by the earthquake, killing most of the guests, but who went on with the marriage ceremony anyway.

*The Persian title has been translated several different ways: IMDb, for example, calls it Where Is the Friend's Home?