Shirin (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Shirin (2008) – A. Kiarostami

To commemorate the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s death this week, I watched this very conceptual art film that ironically features 112 of Iran’s top actresses along with Juliette Binoche.  What we see is only their faces, apparently watching a film version of the classic tale of Shirin and Khosrow. The film is about 90 minutes long, so we are compelled to listen carefully to the film’s soundtrack and to see how this registers on the actresses’ faces.  Do they know they are being filmed?  Are they over-doing it?  As is always the case with Kiarostami, there are some questions about fiction and reality here. However, things are not really what they appear (which is also typical of Kiarostami’s work).  Rather than film all of these actresses in a real cinema watching a real film, Kiarostami filmed each of them separately (or in small groups of two or three) in his own living room.  It may have been a bit like Warhol’s Screen Tests.  But what’s more, they weren’t reacting to a film at all but instead to Kiarostami’s spoken direction.  Even more bizarrely, Kiarostami selected the “film” to be watched after the actresses had already been recorded and created the version of Shirin and Khosrow himself with another set of actors and actresses.  The foley artists are really working overtime!  He then edited together the soundtrack and the clips of the actresses to create a seamless whole that relies on a sort of audio version of the Kuleshov effect to trick the viewer into believing in cause and effect.  A bloody battle in the story (replete with the usual sound effect of smashed watermelons) results in an almost comic moment when the stars shrink away from the screen (what did Kiarostami really tell them?).  Of course, the film is something of an endurance test and not for the casual viewer but it is impossible not to begin to have thoughts and to engage interactively with the film and this is clearly one of Kiarostami’s goals – he wants us to wonder what the hell is going on!  In addition, there is an additional subtext about the faces of women in an Islamic society when strict religious tenets might require them to be covered – here they are unveiled.  Is this empowering? Is it taboo-breaking?  Do these women feel even more self-conscious?  But then again they are already actresses.  With Kiarostami, the questions never cease.