SHIRIN

Iran, 2008, 90 minutes, Colour.
Niki Aremi, Leila Hatami, Juliet Binoche.
Directed by Abbas Kierostami.

Shirin is another of Abbas Kierostami’s digital experiments. After a career, award-winning, of many contemplative Iranian films (Through the Olive Trees, The Wind Blows Where It Will), Kierostami made a number of experimental films including Ten, digitally photographed inside a car.

While this film has narrative credits, the sketchings of an Arabian Nights-style story of a princess and her suitors, of quest, love and death, the rest of the film focuses on the faces of over one hundred and ten Iranian stage and screen actresses who are responding to the film. It is almost eighty-five minutes of close-ups of the faces. (Some men are glimpsed in some of the shots but the focus is on the women.)

Niki Aremi, Leila Hatami are significant Iranian actresses and Juliet Binoche appears in a few sequences watching the film.

The film will be difficult for people more concerned about action and narrative. However, if one is prepared to simply watch the faces, the range of emotions, the body language, it is an interesting film of portraiture and study of response to film – from a women’s perspective.

1.The work of Kierostami? His status in the world, in Iran? His classic films? His digital experiments?

2.The title, the reference to the heroine of the story? The importance of the captions during the credits, the illustrations of the story – needed for the audio dialogue throughout the whole film? The impact of the audio dialogue, like listening to a radio play?

3.The story itself, Shirin, the king, the travel, the quest, spells, death? The passing of time? Audience response to the audio dialogue? Watching the women and their response and sharing it?

4.The range of women, the Iranian actresses? The style of photography, the close-ups, the men in the background, the predominance of the women? Their wearing their scarves in the Iranian cinema? Sadness, joy, inexpressiveness, emotions? The body language? The scratches, the musings, the role of hands and face?

5.The cumulative effect of this cinema experience, the audience becoming conscious of their own facial reactions, hand reactions, body movements and language?