Abbas Kiarostami
22 June, 1940 - 4 July, 2016
22 June, 1940 - 4 July, 2016
2016 has been a brutal, deadly bastard of a year, but nothing has hit me this hard: the great Abbas Kiarostami, director of such medium-defining masterworks as Where Is the Friend's Home?, Close-Up, Life, and Nothing More, and Taste of Cherry, has died today.
The body of work Kiarostami leaves behind is one of the most humane and aesthetically profound in the history of cinema. As sad as this news surely is, it is a great privilege to be alive at a time when we can appreciate his extraordinary body of work in all its complexity and penetrating insight. I haven't the capacity to properly honor of this titanic figure, one of the great filmmakers to have ever stepped behind a camera, and I can only offer up my unspeakable gratitude for how much I learned about the art form of cinema, and what it means to be human, from his beautiful, challenging, inexhaustible filmography.
Do we know if he completed any work on his final project? I read back in December that he was working on a film set in China, but I can't find any information about its status. It would be so lovely to have one more film from him already completed, but I'm not holding out much hope.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Tim, might you take this opportunity to review Like Someone in Love? As far as I'm concerned it's an underappreciated masterpiece, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If it's his last work, it's a worthy final film, as fascinating and elliptical as anything he's ever done.
Short answer: yes, but not soon. I have a summer schedule about ready to burst at the seams as it is, but before 2016 is over, I'm hoping to have begun and ended a partial Kiarostami retrospective.
ReplyDeleteWell his death actually seems to be rather controversial in Iran. Apparently the doctors treating him weren't straight with him about his condition, and his family is very angry about it. There's a lot of talk going on in Iran now about both medical ethics and the way the government treats it's major artists.
ReplyDeleteAt least according to this article I just read (and holy crap, a patient getting a mastectomy without her consent?!) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/14/abbas-kiarostami-film-maker-death-sparks-debate-patient-right-be-informed-iran
Somebody in my program knows a guy who know a guy... and yeah, the misinformation since March has been absolutely appalling. The amount of easily-accessible information that has been systematically denied to the family is almost beyond belief.
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