My Review of Through the Olive Trees (1994) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This is Abbas Kiarostami-ception reaching its peak as at one point we see the actor who played Kiarostami in And Life Goes On (1992) being directed by another actor who is playing "current" Kiarostami in Through The Olive Trees (1994), who are both being directed by the actual Kiarostami
(who makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in the movie). This is some peak-Iranian New Wave. This movie is our finale of the Koker Trilogy and takes us behind the scenes of the interpersonal drama happening during the filming of And Life Goes On (1992).

This big contention is that two of the actors in one scene of ALGO were involved in a dispute where the guy—Hossein Rezai (what is it with Kiarostami and dudes named Hossein?)—wants to marry the girl—Taherah Landanian—playing his wife, but her family is firmly against it. This causes problems for for Kiarostami as she is ordered not to talk to Rezai and this brings filming to a halt. Such a story would be a sub-plot for in most films, but is the main thrust of this film. Hossein Rezai is a traicomic character in the style of that other Kiarostami-Hossein: Hossein Sabzain of Close Up (1990). While Sabzain's unrequited love was cinema itself, Rezai's unrequited love is Tahereh who is a bit naïve and vain and not average from what we see of her—yet Rezai really keeps you rooting for him, however hopeless his quest feels The open-ended ending reinforces that it was the journey, not the destination, that this film is highlighting as we bring our journey through Koker, Iran to a close.

And touching back on that, through-out this film we have had Babak Ahmadpour and his brother as side characters. Babak starred in the first film of the Koker Trilogy and the search to find out if he was alive after the 1990 earthquake in Koker was the whole reason for the second film in the trilogy. After confirming that he is still alive in the first 15 minutes of this film, the overall-plot moves on from him rather seamlessly and you would not know how important he was to Kiarostami's canon if this was the only film in the trilogy you had watched. Life Goes On, indeed!

My Review of ...And Life Goes On (1992) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This the Iranian New Wave at its peak. When Iranian film-makers decide to go to extremes of blurring fiction and reality in order to tell an honest story rather than a 100% accurate one, you get what Toni Morrison called "the site of memory." How much can you blend reality and fiction together until you gain the ability to almost change reality? On June  21, 1990 the Manjil–Rudbar Earthquake struck northern Iran and killed around 45,000 people. One of the hardest-hit places was the village of Koker where Abbas Kiarostami had filmed his movie Where Is the Friends House?                                         Kiarostami gets his son and immediately makes his way to Koker from Tehran to find Babak Ahmadpour—the boy who starred in WITFH?. The movie is a recounting of this journey.

As the title suggests, the main theme of this movie is that even after apocalyptic devastation, people keep on living. As Kiarostami traveled through the region, he was marked by the resilience of the people even as they were suffering and trying to collect themselves. This film also used a favorite filming method of Kiarostami; while he and his son were portrayed by actors, Kiarostami was always behind the camera interacting directly with people in the film. In doing this, he dares you to classify this as a realist film. The meta-nature of Iranian New Wave films of this era started getting criticized by the Iranian censors and this marked the beginning of Kiarostami's decline in standing with the régime (he never criticized the pre- or post-revolutionary regimes directly, so he was never explicitly banned or went into exile, but after 1999 it became much harder for him to show his films in Iran compared to internationally). 

Abbas Kiarostami always felt that the best films are the ones that look like they made themselves and that is on display here.