The Suitcase of Cinema — Iran
by Javier Solórzano Casarin
“Ten” (2003)
Abbas Kiarostami
Like many Arab countries, Iran is a paradox. It is a country with a rich and vast history, reflected in both culture and society. Persian painting and literature are among the most notable of the 20th century. Iranian ceramics, textiles and architecture are recognized worldwide as one of the most fascinating heritages in the world. Iranian cinema and music have some of the most talented artists of the past 40 years.
It’s charm lies in that exotic and mysterious quality of the Middle East.
On the other hand, Iran is the paradigm of repression and inequality. Hundreds of activists, intellectuals, writers, poets, filmmakers and many others have taken political refuge in Europe or the United States. They have been forced into exile by the oppressive doctrines of governments and the Ayatollahs (messianic figures of the Islamic religion). Hundreds of others have been imprisoned or killed.
These conflicts only make Iran a deeply hermetic nation, isolated from the rest of the world. Its endless warlike discourse against its neighbors has only aggravated the geopolitical situation in the region.
One of the tragedies of Iran is the reality experienced by women. Their daily lives are synonymous with abuse and collective contempt. In most circles, they are second-class citizens.
This is the subject matter of the deceptively modest masterpiece by the extraordinay late filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami (“Certified Copy”). His feature film “Ten” is a masterful example of the simplicity that can characterize cinematic language. At a first glance it might appear to be merely a lucid exercise in film aesthetics, but in fact it is much more than that. It is a film that intends and succeeds in telling a captivating story with an extremely simple narrative method.
Kiarostami sets up in a single shot, two video cameras; one frames the pilot and the other the co-pilot. For an hour and a half that’s what we see, the pilot and passenger engaging in a series of conversations that touch on a variety of issues related to women in Iran.
The story follows a beautiful divorced woman (Mania Akbari) who, while driving through the busy streets of Tehran, interacts with different women (including her sister, a prostitute and an old woman) over the span of several days. This gives us an opportunity to listen to various dialogues that reflect these women’s positions on life and the conflicts they are currently experiencing. The other passenger which provides us with a different aspect of the discussion is the woman’s precocious teenager son, who surely under the influence of a resentful father, does not miss the slightest opportunity to claim his abandonment.
He represents the male gaze, a gender that dominates Iranian society completely. In his eyes, disguised in other circumstances, his mother is guilty of wanting to be independent. Her responsibility lies in the fact that she does not accept that her place is at home, where she must remain faithful to her husband, ready exclusively to serve and please. What makes matters worse is that our protagonist has remarried. To the public eye, not only men, this action is a shameful provocation to the religious and moral foundations of Islamic society.
It is fascinating to witness how Kiarostami, using an elegant model of practicality, can tell us so much with so little. We only need that small, limited frame to understand the spatial context, the dramatic construction and the complexity of the characters.
The women in “Ten” are a captivating and moving window into a world that is governed by a set of codes that are mostly foreign to those of the West, but with which we also share, still in general terms, a refusal to accept women as our equals.
