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The titles play over a rusty iron door which sways to the spirited chatter of schoolboys. The teacher has no patience for sloppy work, one of the students (Ahmed Ahmedpour) receives a final warning, the punishment is expulsion. His classmate (Babek Ahmedpour) is later on petrified to learn the mixed-up contents of his backpack, and states his mission: "I've taken his notebook and must return it to him." Tracing the 8-year-old's journey, Abbas Kiarostami is the equal of Ozu and Tati as metaphysical gagman. The Z-shaped path out of Koker (a hill with a single withered tree at the top) is a marvelous visual joke, the slanting steps into Poshteh suggest the gateway of an ancient kingdom. Shot after shot, a spare virtuosity: The villager who disappears under the bundle of wheat he carries on his back, the herd of goats that briefly fills the screen as night falls, the colored pattern that materializes on the wall as lights are turned on. The camera rushes along with the young protagonist, then leisurely sits on the porch for the grandfather's tale of parental discipline ("a penny a week and a beating every fortnight") and the blacksmith's haggling calculations (the boy's eyes dart gravely as a page is ripped out of the notebook). It takes maturity to understand the simplicity of childhood, and genius to express the morality that transcends it. The lad's impatient walk with the elderly carpenter is practically a Buson haiku ("Moon in the sky's top / Clearly passes through / This dead town street"). The bedroom door slams open to reveal Mother braving the wind at the clothesline, it dissolves to the blackboard on a bare wall. "Buy some apples?" "No more teeth to eat them with." The foundation for Kiarostami's trilogy (Life and Nothing More, Through the Olive Trees), yet by itself complete and perfect. With Khodabakhsh Defaei, Iran Outari, Ait Ansari, Biman Mouafi, and Hamdollah Askarpour.
--- Fernando F. Croce |