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Cortechba Overrated

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Bill M. Naturally, before obtaining this film I checked with IMDb regarding its entertainment value. But I mis-read the plot. I thought the director (and his son) played themselves in the film. Now upon re-reading the user comments here, I discover they were played by actors. Very good actors. Also I discover only seven reviews of this work. So I feel obligated to increase that number by one.If you are a citizen of the U.S. who is registered to vote, you should also see this movie. All the people in this movie live in Iran. Iran is one of those oil-rich countries which is weaker than the U.S., making it an attractive target for American invasion. Iran is a sovereign nation, and should not be invaded.

rasecz There is a long intro before the title. A film director and his son are shown driving in a small beat-up car to northern Iran soon after the 1990 earthquake. When the car enters a long tunnel, the camera keeps rolling and on the darken screen the titles finally appear.The film director is nominally Kiarostami, but played by an actor. Typical for his films, the documentary genre blurs with the fictional account. The devastation that we see from the moving car is real, though the lamentations we witness are probably staged, which does not diminish the sense of suffering of the affected local communities.The impetus of this travelogue through a torn landscape is to locate at least one of the kids that was his main character in one of his previous films, "Khaneh-je doost kojast?". That quest is the director's central preoccupation, so much so he does not recognize another boy, who he gives a lift to, that had a secondary role in that film. If you see the aforementioned film, you will clearly remember the face.The quest is made difficult by roads that have been gutted or blocked by rock and earth slides, and by the steep mountainous terrain of his goal, the small town of Koker. As he gets tantalizing close, we root for him.The way the film ends may be disappointing to some, but I found that it matched the title of the film, "And Life Goes On". For the survivors of the earthquake there is mourning for the dead, but at the same time the 1990 World Soccer Cup is going on. What team will make it to the final? While houses have to be rebuilt, it is also important that TV antennas be lifted so that all can see the games in the evening. The director will make more films but now he is concerned about the well-being of that child actor. So life goes on, the quest must go on. There is no ending.

omegabane Unlike his earlier film, Where is the Friend's House, Abbas Kiarostami's Life, and Nothing More fails to enrapture viewers with the real life of contemporary Iran. While Friend's House was a moving film rooted in the Iranian child's sense of responsibility, Life is little more than a trumped up Iranian version of American reality TV. For the entire film, we are literally dragged along while a man, portraying Kiarostami, and his son go in search of the two young actors from Where is the Friend's House following a devastating earthquake. We accompany them as they sit in traffic jams, take side roads that seem to go nowhere, and get directions from people who don't know anything about where the roads lead. During our busy lives, we experience enough traffic jams or wrong turns without having to sit through them during a film. Along the way, the director and his son give rides to various characters, which inevitably leads to trite dialogue reminiscent of the pseudo-philosophical talk you would hear in the living room of the Big Brother house. In addition to the one-dimensional characters, the use of classical music in three different scenes of the film is completely inappropriate and throws the viewer even further out of the already palsied narrative.*** possible "spoiler" follows ***Kiarostami's choice of ending destroys his final chance at redeeming the film by failing to leave the viewer with any resolution. After leaving his son to watch the football match on TV in the tent-camp, and finding the road to Koker, the director must match his old car against a daunting hill. After several failed attempts at climbing the hill, he turns around and drives back the way he came. Naturally, the viewer assumes that he has given up finding the boys and is going to return home, but moments later we see him come back and make one more attempt at conquering the hill. This last attempt is successful, and in the final shot, we watch the car stop to pick up one final passenger and then drive off-screen in the direction of Koker. The viewer never learns whether or not the boys are alive, or even if the director makes it to Koker. While even an ending where the director gives up would not be satisfactory, leaving the film's central question unanswered makes the 95 minutes spent watching the movie an unjustifiable waste of time. In the end, the film amounts to little more than an undeveloped `reality show' with the cliché message of `it's the journey that counts.' Your time would be better spent watching the re-run of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.

huxley-4 Life and Nothing More (1992, dir. Abbas Kiarostami) What is so unusual about Kiarostami's films? They seem to to inhabit a world that is so ordinary, mundane even, and yet they are lent a sense of wonder as well. The simplicity of action and story is undermined by circumstances that reveal the courage that it takes just in order to live. Here a man and his son are driving to Koker, a town which has been devastated by the Iranian earthquake. Along the way they come across people who are carrying their belongings, food supplies, heaters, etc. after having lost everything. They stop to ask for directions. One woman can't help them, breaks out in tears, "I've lost 16 people" The man can only say, "May god grant you forbearance." There is no easy sentimentalism. Here life goes on for those that survive in spite of it all. There is still the need to fill ones life with love and joy and momentary pleasure. One man talks of his plan to get married in his hometown, despite the disaster. The son talks to his friend about watching a soccer game. He becomes terrifically excited by the building of an antenna at one of the nearby villages which will allow him to watch the game. You see none of the horrific footage of mangled bodies and uncontrollably hysterical victims that we usually associate with natural disasters. You only see people who have experienced tragedy, but continue to live and endure.