Ten

Ten is an intriguing movie. Kiarostami explores the abilities of digital camera by mounting it at just two fixed angles on the dashboard of a car, showing us almost only the driver's and the passenger's faces. Such a stationary structure surprises by its moving content, which takes shape as the movie unfolds.

The driver is a young Iranian divorcée, recently remarried, whose conversations with a son, sisters, a young and an old woman makes up the ten episodes of the movie.

The performance taken from the kid is astonishingly natural, and other characters also appear to be just playing their everyday lives. Kiarostami opens an eye through the little gap of its two fixed digital cameras on the mundane facts of the Iran's capital life as experienced by a typical middle-class woman. The plots are so natural no one can find a better way of experiencing the knotted, contradictory complexity of such a woman's life in Iran from outside. The flow is of the scenes is smooth and the dialogues are, at least to the Iranian audience, courageous and funny, though familiar at the same time. It's a movie worth watching more than once.

I saw this in memory of Abbas Kiarostami who passed away the other day, this Sufi seer of transient, evanescent life that circles back and goes out again like fireflies in the night. I have felt him so close in spirit; it was one of the saddest losses in recent years.

My relationship with him is rather simple and uncluttered, much like the films he makes. Shucks about form and whether the camera moves or not as far as I'm concerned. It's a tool to create stillness so that simple gestures will ring wide; but you can't still the mind of a viewer who has a million thoughts running in his head while watching, and you can't prevent a viewer who wants to remain still by moving the camera.

And I urge you as always to not settle for receiving films, his or anyone else's, as only cultural items that were made for us to intellectualize and keep up to date with norms of life in faraway places. It can make for interesting post-viewing discussion, but most of all, make sure to know things privately in your own self, allow them to have their cosmic import that speaks about the fact that here you are, living a life that will last a little while more.

A woman drives around Tehran, having conversations with people on the passenger's seat during a day and a night, this is the whole story here. We never leave the car. The camera simply flits between shots of the driver and passenger.

By way of insights, you will glean several here, about the place of women in Iran, expectations of being a housewife and how hard it is to obtain a divorce. Religion as focal point. You might consider that her unruly son who constantly berates her is promulgating larger social attitudes at play; a far more eyeopening way than showing us an angry mullah. You will get to decide how much of all this echoes your own society.

But now, how about we allow it to simply be about a woman who drives around life that wells up around her with anxieties?

A life that breaks down around the edges, as all lives do. A marriage that didn't work out and a son that pushes himself away from her. A man and woman who wanted different things from life and parted ways. You might appreciate here that the man allowed himself to be painted as drug user before the court as the only way for her to get the divorce.

Parallel, possible lives materialize in the seat next to her. A sister who is going through a breakup she has already gone through; how hopeless it is to cling to love that isn't there. Another woman whose marriage was broken off at the last moment. A prostitute who scoffs at the conventions of marriage. An old woman on her way to the mosque.

It ends with a son who is growing up to be a man and she has to softly let go into life. It isn't just a social film, but you'll have to allow yourself to watch from a softer distance. Kiarostami does it here, bestows the gift of wisdom. In the right ears, it will be a sutra teaching us impermanence and non-attachment.

I have seen many impressive Iranian films over the years. "Ten" may be the very best of them for a variety of reasons. I think the film is remarkable because it looks so simple, but I imagine setting up the camera and capturing the realistic dialogue and plot-line we see in the film had to have taken a lot of preparation. I also think the director deliberately chose scenery to accommodate the backdrop of the film, and he must have driven around Teheran constantly to figure out which images to put in the background. I think the scenes with the murals of new arch-conservative president are very telling. "Ten" seems to have a lot of messages under the radar, including the subversive powers of all governments (certainly including our own in America) to censor art. I think the relationship between the mother and her son is a very poignant one, and it shows how children and adults simply live in different spheres of the universe. Film is strikingly similar in some aspects to American independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson's film "Signal 7" which came out over 20 years ago.

"Ten" really impressed me for many reasons. The first one is the interpretation of the non-professional actresses and the boy Amin Maher. It is simply amazing the first sequence (number 10) with fifteen minutes of dialogs between the lead character and her son without any cut. The second reason is the intense and impressive insight in the repressed women's world in Iran. I believe that most of the Westerns have no idea about the feelings and the culture of Iranian women, and Abbas Kiarostami shows very real dialogs picturing the lifestyle of a middle class woman and some samples in other women of different classes (the prostitute, the religious woman etc.). The third reason was the simplicity and the originality of the location: inside a car, with a divorced woman transporting her resented son; her sister; a prostitute; an old lady; and a romantic young woman, along different days. I would never imagine such a splendid scenario for a movie with such a theme. Last but not the least, the remarkable beauty of the face of the driver (Mania Akbari) is awesome: she is exotic for Brazilian standards, but really a very beautiful woman. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "10 Dez" ("10 Ten")

My experience with Iranian film is pretty superficial having only seen a handful, but none have disappointed me. I saw Kiarostami's early film Where Does The Friend Live? and was completely blown away. I then saw Saalam Cinema by Iran's other giant Mohsen Makhmalbaf - and then I realised just how important this country's output has been.

Ten did nothing to diminish this view, and I'll try not to repeat much of what's already been said here. I saw an Iranian person on this site claim that there was too much lost in the translation from Farsi to English. This is always the case with translation, but I am quite sure Ten gets away with it. I recently saw Ingmar Bergman's Saraband and if you think language being stilted ruins a movie then I am sure seeing that film will shatter the view. The single thing that destroys it in both cases is the incredible power of the acting - the truth lies in their facial expression. I am quite sure 9 out of 10 people asked without context would swear blind Ten was a documentary.

In the western world overrun by "reality" TV, its significance is lost on some, but if you take the time to realise that these people are actually acting - and more than likely doing it for the first time - thats where the power lies. Try taking this film, put it in America and put Hollywood A-Listers in the car and see where it goes. Basically, how you could call both what they do and what happens in this film acting is opened to debate. This is true of the majority of Iranian output.

Ten would be significant for these reasons alone, but when you take into account how much insight you gain into the life of a woman in there who tries to say no to male domination and to "love herself" it really comes into its own. This is the case of much of this countries output - and what sets is far apart from other countries. What we learn ultimately is this struggle, though perhaps more explicit in Iran, is a struggle felt by all women in the world. It's a film which in that way unites rather than divides which in light of Iran's current status in global affairs is what probably what makes it one of the more important Cinema's in the world.