Shirin (PG.)
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
Starring Golishifteh Fararhani, Mahnaz Afshar, Niki Karimi, Juliette Binoche. 90 mins Farsi with subtitles.
As much as I can, I try to go into a film knowing as little as possible about it so that I my reaction to it is unclouded by hype and received opinion. The problem with this state of innocence approach is that every once in a while you just walk unthinkingly right into a trap. In these cases I function less as a reviewer and more as your Designated Idiot, a communal fall guy for the rest of you to laugh and point at.
All I knew about Shirin going is was that it was the latest film by Kiarostami, a festival favourite and master of world cinema, especially ten years ago when Iranian cinema was what Romanian cinema was five years ago.
The opening is wonderful. We see a woman in a cinema watching a film and the film methodically cuts to different women, one by one, as they are engrossed in a melodramatic film about a tragic love affair that we can’t see.
For five minutes this is enthralling.
After ten minutes you are marvelling at the audacity of how long he’s continuing with this opening montage.
After fifteen minutes a sense of panic is beginning to set in. He can’t make the whole film about this, can he? Oh yes he can, he most certainly can. A whole ninety minutes of it.
What can I say? It’s a little on the dull side. Why didn’t I walk out? I wanted to find out what didn’t happen in the end.
Boring is not really the issue anyway. As films of people watching films go it’s not a good one. All the women are filmed individually so although you see the odd face in the background there is no sense of film as a communal experience. Often when an effective horror film comes out they’ll publicise it with film of an audience reacting in unison to the shocks and those brief snippets are much more potent artistic achievements. Spoiler – I think I could have forgiven a lot if the film had ended with the final credits and the audience moving together towards the exit.
There’s no story to it. You’d expect at some point for the unseen movie to impose a shadow narrative, that you follow the story on the screen through the faces of the audience but the film on screen seems to be made up of unconnected snippets, the most dramatic moments.
Worst of all, all the women are actors, not real people – and actors aren’t real people, even the ones that aren’t famous (particularly the ones that aren’t famous.) And the acting is horrible. A film that is made up of nothing but close ups is like giving smack to a junkie. So off they go, all 114 of them trying to do their “rapt involvement in this onscreen melodrama” with more intensity than the others, to make their eyes more watery and their tears to be longer and slower than the others.
There will of course be the sequel which will be the film of an audience watching Shirin in a Soho screening room, all shifting and yawning and stretching and making notes and staring at the ceiling their expression poignantly and wordlessly conveying how can I sit here when it’s a lovely summer evening and could be getting some exercise while the man from Sight and Sound/ Time Out will be leaning forward enthralled by it all.
And if you watch this film, let’s call it Shirin Shirin, you may find yourself inexplicably recalling the Game For A Laugh presenters show farewell “Watching you, watching us, watching you, watching us.”
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
Starring Golishifteh Fararhani, Mahnaz Afshar, Niki Karimi, Juliette Binoche. 90 mins Farsi with subtitles.
As much as I can, I try to go into a film knowing as little as possible about it so that I my reaction to it is unclouded by hype and received opinion. The problem with this state of innocence approach is that every once in a while you just walk unthinkingly right into a trap. In these cases I function less as a reviewer and more as your Designated Idiot, a communal fall guy for the rest of you to laugh and point at.
All I knew about Shirin going is was that it was the latest film by Kiarostami, a festival favourite and master of world cinema, especially ten years ago when Iranian cinema was what Romanian cinema was five years ago.
The opening is wonderful. We see a woman in a cinema watching a film and the film methodically cuts to different women, one by one, as they are engrossed in a melodramatic film about a tragic love affair that we can’t see.
For five minutes this is enthralling.
After ten minutes you are marvelling at the audacity of how long he’s continuing with this opening montage.
After fifteen minutes a sense of panic is beginning to set in. He can’t make the whole film about this, can he? Oh yes he can, he most certainly can. A whole ninety minutes of it.
What can I say? It’s a little on the dull side. Why didn’t I walk out? I wanted to find out what didn’t happen in the end.
Boring is not really the issue anyway. As films of people watching films go it’s not a good one. All the women are filmed individually so although you see the odd face in the background there is no sense of film as a communal experience. Often when an effective horror film comes out they’ll publicise it with film of an audience reacting in unison to the shocks and those brief snippets are much more potent artistic achievements. Spoiler – I think I could have forgiven a lot if the film had ended with the final credits and the audience moving together towards the exit.
There’s no story to it. You’d expect at some point for the unseen movie to impose a shadow narrative, that you follow the story on the screen through the faces of the audience but the film on screen seems to be made up of unconnected snippets, the most dramatic moments.
Worst of all, all the women are actors, not real people – and actors aren’t real people, even the ones that aren’t famous (particularly the ones that aren’t famous.) And the acting is horrible. A film that is made up of nothing but close ups is like giving smack to a junkie. So off they go, all 114 of them trying to do their “rapt involvement in this onscreen melodrama” with more intensity than the others, to make their eyes more watery and their tears to be longer and slower than the others.
There will of course be the sequel which will be the film of an audience watching Shirin in a Soho screening room, all shifting and yawning and stretching and making notes and staring at the ceiling their expression poignantly and wordlessly conveying how can I sit here when it’s a lovely summer evening and could be getting some exercise while the man from Sight and Sound/ Time Out will be leaning forward enthralled by it all.
And if you watch this film, let’s call it Shirin Shirin, you may find yourself inexplicably recalling the Game For A Laugh presenters show farewell “Watching you, watching us, watching you, watching us.”
