Ten by Abbas Kiarostami

September 28, 2007

I would rate Ten a step ahead of Taste of Cherry. Both are wonderful, but Ten is a truly rare film. The entirety of Ten is shot from inside a car.. and we watch one woman talking to her son, her sister, a friend, and several strangers to whom she gives a ride. Through these sometimes emotional sometimes everyday conversations a convincing portrait emerges.. a portrait of a woman caught between responsibility and freedom.

The camera faces either the woman (driving) or the person accompanying her in the passenger seat. The camera is static and stays focused on a single character. At the same time the viewer's eyes wander to the portion of the screen in which the Iranian world is passing. We see people on the streets, cars, a mosque, shops, freeways, night scenes, and street after street. This constantly changing portion of the screen satisfies the documenter in me.. while the slowly opening and expanding story of this woman keeps my mind occupied in a narrative.

I like Ten enough that I plan to show a portion of it in my Islam class this term. It should complement Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This graphic novel works in my class on account of its ability to surprise people with the way secular and genuine lives go forward in the midst of a society that looks to many Americans as if it is wholly dominated by religion. Ten, like Persepolis, is hardly a theological work, but it portrays a woman who is enmeshed in a religious culture and finding room for herself to maneuver as an individual.. a task that is hard to bring off.

The dashboard film style employed by Kiarostami in Ten opens up formal possibilities. It might seem like a gimmick.. but that is to miss the point. Kiarostami has found a style that frees him from the weight of film production and a large crew. From his point of view this simplifying of film technique allows for a tighter and less mediated grip on reality. In the documentary Ten on Ten that accompanies the DVD of Ten, Kiarostami singles out the freedom that this style brings: artists are allowed to work alone again; investors and technical skills become devalued. It is a style that will never produce a Matrix.. or for that matter any Hollywood style film.. but if we can be content with just life, it is perfect.

The digital camera is finally what enables this style. A traditional film camera could hardly have been mounted on a car's dashboard. According to Kiarostami, the small size of the digital camera allows people to act more naturally than they would when someone yells "sound, camera, action". When he mentions his experience with a digital camera in Uganda, Kiarostami calls the camera a "digital pen".. meaning that the camera functions as a kind of journal.. due, i imagine, to its portability and the possibility of filming almost constantly without worrying too much about film costs.

I am becoming a believer. The idea that filmmaking can be an artistic endeavor by an individual.. and represent a personal vision of the world.. that has dawned on me as a revelation recently. I think the next step that Kiarostami could travel is to break away from the world of Cannes and important film festivals and allow his takes on life to flow in some of the democratic channels of opened up by the internet.. which is the necessary companion to the digital camera.