Jay Schuck

Stony Brook University

Department of Art

ARH 400 – Iranian Cinema

Spring 2013

Reality v. Fiction in Abbas Kiarostami’s “Koker Trilogy”

The “Koker Trilogy” refers to a series of films directed by the critically acclaimed

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami created between 1987 and 1994. The films are

connected through the use of the same actors, characters and location. The latter two

resolve around the 1990 earthquake that occurred in the area that killed close to 50,000

people and its aftermath. The trilogy is ambiguous as the division between fiction and

reality becomes increasingly blurred as the films progress. The real lives of the actors are

interweaved into the general narrative of the films and alter various scenes in the movies.

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, states that by

bracketing of reality, with each movie representing a different version of it in its own

sense, Kiarostami suspends the concepts of morality, re-envisioning it as he goes along.1

Where is the Friend’s Home? follows the journey of a young student named Ahmed

through Koker, and its neighboring villages, as he attempts to return a classmate’s

schoolbook he mistakenly took. The book is important because without it, Ahmed’s

classmate will surely be expelled. The 1992 film Life and Nothing More is set five days

after the devastating earthquake of 1990 that struck northern Iran. It follows a fictitious

Kiarostami and his son in their search for, and to learn the fate of, Ahmed and several

other actors from the pervious film, seeing the aftermath of the earthquake along the way.

The final film in the trilogy, Through the Olive Tree, begins with a bearded man

addressing the camera stating his name and that he will be playing the part of the director

in this movie. The film recounts the Kiarostami’s process of filming and goes through the

creation of select scenes that would later be used to in Life and Nothing More. All three

films are created in Kiarostami’s signature style of employing long takes, spare

dialogues, the use of non-actors, are shot on-location, and have a strong emphasis on

                                                        1 Dabshi, Masters and Masterpieces, p. 295

landscape and the urban space. Additionally, the latter two find Kiarostami using a fixed

camera in the car that takes in the changing landscape, and urban setting, a technique he

would go on to use in some of his later works including The Taste of Cherry and Ten.

Scenes are shot in ‘real time’ giving all three a documentary style quality. For

Kiarostami, the closest people can get to the truth is through lying.2 By this logic,

Kiarostami presents reality within fiction, and his films become a fictionalized perversion

of the truth leading the audience, critics, and fellow filmmakers to question what is real in

cinema.

Where is the Friend’s Home? is a simple tale of a young, eight year old student as

he looks for his friend in an attempt to return to him his homework notebook. It is a

universal plotline that is relatable to practically anyone regardless of his or her

nationality. The film starts in the classroom of an authoritarian teacher who is lecturing to

his class the importance of following rules and the necessity of receiving a proper

education. The instructor makes an example of one student for using a piece of loose-leaf

instead of his notebook and warns him that if he forgets his book again he will be

expelled. After mistakenly taking this classmate’s book, Ahmed feels an obligation the

book or should the fate of his classmate rest on his conscious. Throughout the movie he is

constantly ignored or talked over by every prominent adult figure. He pleads with his

mother in real time for a good ten minutes for him to return the book, only to have her not

listen to him and repeatedly say that he can go out once he finishes his homework. When

he finally leaves the house he meets a contractor who is too busy taking estimates to

answer the simple question of ‘are you the father of my friend?’ When he is running

                                                        2 "Abbas Kiarostami: Biography"

through town he stopped by his grandfather who complains that his grandson would

rather argue with his elders than to blindly follow their demands. And when he finally

finds someone to lead him to his friend’s house, the man is too insistent to show the boy

the doors and windows he made to be of any assistance. At the end of the day, Ahmed

leaves the village with his friend’s book in hand, opting to do both of their homework and

return the book during class. The film is veiled in symbolic meaning that reveals

Kiarostami’s true feels on contemporary Iranian culture. The argument can be made the

Ahmed is representative of the new, post-revolutionary Iran as he is eight years old in a

film set in 1987, eight years after the Islamic Revolution. Those older then he ignore him

and he ultimately submits to the rules and regulations of his elders. The action of the

character going to great lengths to return his classmate’s book becomes representative of

the civic duty an individual has to another, and is the primary message of the film. Shots

are taken in real time with very little transitions between scenes giving the illusion that

the film was shot over the course of two days. The conversations Ahmed has with various

village elders, and the shots of his long walks among the zigzagging pathway from one

village to another reveal the chaos and order of public life.3 Because Kiarostami uses

non-actors to play the parts of his films, the characters here become fictionalized

contortions of themselves. A conversation in Through the Olive Trees tells the audience

that the reason the actor who placed the teacher in the first film done it so well was

because he was a teacher in real life. The true reality lies buried beneath the surface of

what is presented before the audience. He redefines reality in these films through

unveiling concealed information in terms of conversations, actions, and through visual

                                                        3 Saeed-Vafa, Abbas Kiarostami

effects.4 The characters are real people, but the plot of the movie is scripted or at the very

least outlined. This notion rings true in the final two installments of the trilogy until

finally, the audience cannot distinguish between the fictitious and real lives of the actors.

Several years after Where Is the Friend’s Home?, a huge earthquake struck Koker

and its surrounding villages in northern Iran. The disaster brought untold destruction to

the area and inspired Kiarostami to film his journey back to the film to learn the fate of

Ahmed and several of his co-stars. Life and Nothing More follows Kiarostami and his

young son in a documentary-style narrative with long takes and pauses through the film.

A camera is placed on the dashboard of the director’s car and the film crew takes

stunning shots of the landscape and surrounding destruction caused by the quake.

Refugees are abundant in the film, seen settling in tents along the roads or even in the

woods were Kiarostami finds a baby in a hammock. This child is reminiscent of Ahmed’s

infant sibling from the first film, leading audiences to question if this is where his family

seeks refuge. This scene however is revealed to be a work of fiction in Through the Olive

Trees, thus being an example of Kiarostami bracketing reality. In this scene in the film

Kiarostami plays with the sympathy of his audience, making the situation in Koker

appear drastic and desperate. Whereas in the latter film it is shown as an illusion, with

Kiarostami extending their concept of reality to another level. Throughout his journey

Kiarostami encounters numerous people who are trying to pick up the pieces of their

shattered lives. Despite aiding displaced villages through his travels, he appears divorced

of sympathy coming off, as one critic describe, as arrogant and emotionless.5 He is

unnerved of the destruction around him, just as a documentarian would apparent when

                                                        4 Dabshi, Masters and Masterpieces, pp. 283-284 5 Dabshi, Masters and Masterpieces, p. 291

reporting on a disaster. Eventually the pair crosses paths with one of the older actors who

took a part in the first film. Unlike his portrayal in the first film, the man here appears to

be physically fit. When the son asks the man why in the first film he appeared with a

hunched back, the actor replies that that was what the director was looking for in the film,

again elevating the film to another level of reality. This short conversation makes note

that the previous film was a work of fiction, bringing Life and Nothing More on a higher

plane of reality. This is who the actor really is with his appearance in Where is the

Friend’s Home? becoming a caricature of himself. The director also makes reference to

the first film by showing passersby posters of the film with Ahmed on them. Aside from

acknowledging that they have seen the film, or have at least heard about the film, they are

unable to point him in the right direction. At the end of movie the director is no closer to

finding his stars than he was when he started his search, despite the fact that he was found

and appear in the third movie. Beneath the surface the underlying emphasis is on the

preciousness of life, as the director travels to find his actors he is brought into contact

with total destruction of villages, buildings, roads, and human life. Although they are in a

time of mourning, it is not shown on camera. In spite of losing everything, the people he

encounters are optimistic of the future, seeing the destruction, and their survival, an act of

God. It is because of his will that they survived destruction and through this belief they

begin to rebuild their lives. After watching the films one must ask if the destruction

captured on camera is real or staged as the final installment in the supposed trilogy

reveals the scripted nature of Life and Nothing More.

The third and final film of the Koker Trilogy, Through the Olive Trees, begins

with an actor addressing the camera stating his name, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, and

telling the audience that he is the actor who plays the director in the film. The movies

then goes off into the director’s process of selecting actors who would appear in Life and

Nothing More. Right from the beginning the audience is made aware of the fact that the

journey the director took in the previous film, the people he came into contact with, the

stories they told, and the destruction caught on film, are all illusions created by

Kiarostami thus bring this installment to an alternate reality. He blurs the line between

illusion and reality in this scene; the actor tells the audience that he is not Kiarostami but

acts as Kiarostami would. Like in the pervious film, the Kiarostami here states that his

pervious film was scripted, that there was a plot behind it, and that the figures from that

film are not what they appear. This film gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of

Kiarostami’s filmmaker process. The girls Keshavarz chooses from are non-actor

students who are in the middle of taking their exams. Although only one or two will

appear in the film he is shooting for, the process of selection is caught on camera, thus

making every girl in the field a part of the third movie. The film takes a romantic turn

when Kiarostami is introduced to Hossein, a young man who is in love with Tahereh, one

of the actors he recently casted. The actor’s real life preferences begin to influence the

movie. Originally Hossein was a mason who is told to carry a bag of plaster up a flight of

stairs before introducing himself to the Kiarostami of the second film. Due to his refusal

and unwillingness to handle the material, due to his disdain of being a mason in real life,

the director revised Hossein’s character, making him and Tahereh newlyweds. The

division between reality and imaginary is apparent when the director reveals the making

of several scenes. The dialogue between Hossein and the fake Kiarostami reveals that

although Hossein, in all honesty, lost twenty-five relatives from the destruction of the

earthquake, the director alters the line, insisting that he lost sixty-five relatives in total.

This baffles the actor who has trouble remembering the lie. Several takes are shot before

he finally delivers the scripted story. This change in reality is probably to play on the

pathos of the audience and to strengthen the message that although life can be terrible at

times, you have to be strong and preserve through it. It is also revealed in the film that the

Kiarostami from Life and Nothing More is nothing more than another actor. Although he

appeared to be the closest to being Kiarostami in that film, here he becomes a question of

who is represented. Is he just another actor hired to portray Kiarostami or is he an actor

hired to portray Keshavarz’s portrayal Kiarostami? This not only reveals the fictiveness

of Life and Nothing More, it also reveals the fictiveness of Through the Olive Trees.

Kiarostami weakens the presumption of narrative-as-truth concept that has generally been

accepted in cinema, exposing a reality beyond conception.6 The ultimate reality, the true

Kiarostami and his film crew, never make an appearance throughout any of these films,

forever remaining out of reach form the audience. Keshavarz’s Kiarostami and his film

crew’s cameras are fixed on the actors from Life and Nothing More, but another camera,

that of the real Kiarostami, is fixed on them. Through creating these illusions of reality

Kiarostami is ultimately encouraging his viewers to question what is presented before

them and to notice that not everything can be taken at face value.

The trilogy of films appears to be on different plains of reality with each one

becoming closer to reality as they progress. Although the fate of Ahmed is not revealed in

the second film, the audience is treated with his present in the third film, appearing as a

secondary character. His present gives the audience a sense of closure but also shows that

Kiarostami did in fact find him and chose not to show him in the second film. The final

                                                        6 Dabshi, Masters and Masterpieces, p. 295

installment gives the audience a glimpse behind the camera and into the filming camps.

The documentary crew becomes actors within the film and one has to question if their

actions and dialogues are scripted. Unlike the ending of The Taste of Cherry, the true film

crew is not shown and Kiarostami remains hidden from the public. All three films are

illusions of reality, fictitious stories meant to question the audience, testing their concepts

of the physical world. This series of films and the disillusionment of reality and fiction

may be the director’s own personal feelings on cinema. After all, even if a film is based

on a true story, the scenes are reenacted and in most cases, actors are brought in to

become the characters. These characters are thus based on the interpretations of the

actors, directors and producers, and are perversions of what they truly are. Even

documentaries aren’t one hundred percent real as they are edited to convey or argue a

point. The two Kiarostamis become interpretations of the real director while he himself

remains an enigma. It is impossible to capture reality on film and this grouping of movies

is a perfect representation of attempting the impossible. The end result is a complicated

series of films each more self-conscious than the last. At the end of it all, the audience is

left wondering if the final documentary is the closest attempt to recreating reality or if

everything within that film was scripted. It would be nice to think that Hossein, who

spent the whole movie wooing Tahereh, truly felt love for her as opposed to the pair just

being two actors playing a part. Plotlines become illusions meant to express the director’s

true intentions. The universal themes of love, life, and camaraderie among friends and

countrymen are expressed on screen, interwoven among the illusions of reality. One can

never know while watching a Kiarostami what is true and what is staged and that is what

makes him a captivating cinematographer.

Bibliography

"Abbas Kiarostami: Biography.” Zeitgeist, The Spirit of the Time.

<http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/director.php?director_id=33>. Retrieved

March 18th, 2013.

Dabashi, Hamid. Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema. Waldorf: Mage

Publishing, 2007. PP. 283 – 324.

Saeed-Vafa, Mehrnaz, “Abbas Kiarostami.” Senses of Cinema. Film Victoria Australia.

<http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/kiaromstami/>. Retrieved

March 20th, 2013