Biography

The Immersive Camera of Iranian Film: An Analysis of the Cinematographic Methods of Asghar Farhadi, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar Panahi

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          In the first shot shown after the opening credits in A Separation the camera is positioned from the perspective of a judge hearing a case for divorce. The couples make their arguments directly to the camera, as if the audience itself was the judge. The camera does not protect the audience from the tension that the judge and couple feel in the scene by changing the perspective to that of a third-person observer, but instead exposes them to the vulnerability of the situation. The sense of immersion created by perspective in turn creates a sense of realism. A Separation is only one example of many Iranian art house films which use this method. Iranian art house cinema often focus on topics relevant to the life of normal people and intentionally force their audience to imagine themselves in these relatable situations through creative decisions and visual techniques. This interest in realism results in a distinctive aesthetic of realism.

          This realism partially stems from the intense censorship instituted by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance after the Islamic Republic government came into power in 1979. The many restrictions on, and corresponding tight budgets of, the Iranian film industry naturally prevent many film artists from using the technology commonly used by American film artists to create films with more fantastical, or otherwise unrealistically dramatic, content. But instead of letting restrictions force them to make less technologically advanced versions of typically unrealistic films in the American market, Iranian film artists have made the best of their situation by transforming technological limitations into a vehicle for communicating relatability.

One of the primary techniques that Iranian film directors use to create this sense of realism is camera angle and perspective. Timothy Corrigan defines perspective as “the kind of spatial relationship an image establishes between the different objects and figures it is photographing” (75). Corrigan goes on to explain how different camera angles and perspectives create different effects on the audience’s perception and impression of the events of the plot. Iranian film artists specifically choose perspectives that immerse an audience as a direct participant in the events of the plot.

          Through this essay I will prove that Iranian films create a sense of realism through shots that create the impression that the audience is personally observing from a perspective believable to a character. To this end I will be analyzing three renowned Iranian art films: Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, and Jafar Panahi’s This is not a Film. Each of these films use certain perspectives in their shots that create a sense of realism.

          As previously stated, one of the first shots in A Separation is taken from the perspective of the judge evaluating Nader and Simin’s divorce case. This sets a precedent upheld in the rest of the film, where the camera is often positioned somewhere over the shoulder of a character in a scene. While the rest of the shots in A Separation rarely signal this perspective so directly by actually having the person speak, as well as move their hand in frame, while the camera is still located at their point of view, most of the other shots are angled in a way that closely matches the perspective of a character in the scene. How a character sees the world is how the audience sees the world. Partially as a result of this, the camera is often very close to the character or event that is central in its frame,at a distance believable for someone actually present in the scene itself. In the scene where Nader’s father grasps Simin’s hand as she is leaving Nader’s home this is especially obvious. In this sequence of shots, the camera, positioned from Termeh’s perspective for most of the sequence, is so close to Simin and Nader’s father that at some points it is partially blocked by Nader’s out of focus body. In other moments, the frame is so close to Simin that you can see nothing but the hand of Nader’s father gripped on hers.

          To fully create the immersive, certain information is deliberately held out of frame in such a way that it reflects a character’s own lack of certainty. This is best exemplified by how we never see if Razieh actually did fall down the stairs, despite this being one of the most pivotal events in the plot. This is because neither Nader, nor anyone except for Razieh, knows themselves. The perspective of the camera is so anchored to its characters that even the audience does not get to see things that the character does not see.

During the filming of Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami claimed that “the shooting took place without the two actors ever meeting. Each time a character speaks in a close-up, I was at the other side of the camera to answer him and find ways of extracting certain emotions from him. I was the only person who spoke to the old man, the young soldier, and the young seminarian, and they would doubtless be most surprised to not see me in the film” (Mulvey 26). This creative decision is reflective of some of the cinematographic techniques used by Asghar Farhadi to create a sense of realism. The camera is often placed in the car from the perspective of someone sitting in the car to create the effect that the audience is the one being spoken to. We rarely see ourselves when having a conversation with someone, so the audience cannot see the character that they are sharing a point of view with.

          Wide and distant shots are also used in Taste of Cherry to transplant the audience into the scene. Laura Mulvey describes how “Mr Badi’s car sweeps around a wide but defined area, circling out from and returning to a little tree by the side of the road which marks the site of his future grave. The camera follows the road, shot from the car, or follows the car as it moves through the landscape” (26). Although these establishing shots do not necessarily form a perspective believable to a character, they do work to make the sweeping land-scape that surrounds the characters as prominent in the audience’s perception as it is to the characters. Alongside the perspective, the slow pace also works to create the impression of the flow of a life relatable to the audience. In our lives, our visual perspectives only change through slow and deliberate action, and thus often stay trained on a single subject for a long time. The shots in Taste of Cherry are just as long and inert to change.

          Whereas perspective is used to make the audience feel like a character in A Separation and Taste of Cherry, This is not a Film is unique in that the audience actually is recognized as a force in the events of the story. This is not a Film is framed as a video diary, where Jafar Panahi is not only aware of the audience’s existence but talks directly to them. Trent Griffiths describes how, in a scene where Panahi calls his lawyer, “The set-up of the scene – the phone on speaker, the camera positioned to frame him in a perfect mid-shot, Panahi again never looking directly at the lens – serves as a cue to the performativity of this moment; the viewer knows that Panahi knows the camera is there” (36). In a sense, the audience is developing a sort of personal relationship with Panahi, despite never being physically there.

An extra layer of relatability comes from how some of the scenes of the film are shot

from Panahi’s personal smartphone. This reflects the sort of videos that the audience members can and do take in their own lives. Panahi’s experience is thus shifted from something theatrical into something that the audience could just as easily live through themselves.

The fact that the frame of the camera is restricted to a single domestic setting creates a sense of familiarity and vulnerability that advances a sentiment of realism. People tend to spend a significant amount of their life in their homes, and when they take videos many of them are filmed in their homes. All of these creative and aesthetic decisions transform This is not a Film into a story of a life that the audience can imagine themselves living through.

          A Separation, Taste of Cherry, and This is not a Film all demonstrate how through the use of shots that emphasize the perspective that the characters in the film see the world from Iranian films create personal relevance to the audience. This interest in realism is readily seen in the camera angles and perspectives, and similar formal elements, used in these films. This, however, raises the question of why Iranian film artists are so interested in the aesthetics of realism. A significant reason may be the socially critical nature of many Iranian art films. For a socially critical film to be successful, it needs to inspire the audience with enough passion to make meaningful social change. By forcing the audience into the visual point of view of a character, it similarly forces the audience to imagine their lives from the perspective of these characters and feel the emotions of these characters. So, in a sense, this realism is not just because of aesthetic reasons and technological limitations, but is also tied into the goal to encourage an audience to be personally invested in the social issues relevant in their films.