with changes in social and personal circumstances in the modern era.
In a similar way, the temporary union of Elle/she and an art scholar in Certified Copy portrays an ambiguous and inconclusive love. In a sequence in the film, the scholar, who could be seen as Kiarostami’s alter ego, questions the permanency of love in a relationship. He quotes the translation of a part of a poem by M. Omid—“the garden of leaflessness, who dares to say that it isn’t beautiful?”—implying the parallel elegance between the end of love and the blooming of love. Certified Copy crushes any hopes for understanding even the nature of love between the two characters. The beautiful scenery of Tuscany, a handsome couple drinking wine, driving and walking together, and a sophisticated and thought-provoking discussion between them is all the viewers get. As in other films by Kiarostami, the fragmented moments of happiness remind us that life and love are transitory; wholeness is only achieved in understanding nothingness.
In African Violet, when an ailing ex-husband is abandoned in a nursing home, the ex-wife decides to bring him to her home with her new partner. The three of them find new connections that are reminiscent of their bittersweet past lives and the ironic and mystifying affections that they have had for one another. The tragic, painful, and impossible love of a daring woman for two men is portrayed in a poetic mise-en-scene that is the hallmark of Iranian art-house cinema. African Violet is a celebration of colors, dreams, affections, and resoluteness, but also of the indeterminacies of a woman who finds love and lack of love in both of her marriages. The ailing man feels rejuvenated in his ex-wife’s company, but his son takes him back to the nursing home, where he dies in despair. The woman gains not only joy, but also pain in her acts of kindness throughout the narrative. The aesthetics of a hope for heech creates a lyrical cinematic experience for spectators.
As in many other social realist films, the movie Just 6.5 represents the impossible love, which makes social failures and shortcomings even more painful for its characters. In Just 6.5, a drug lord, waiting to be executed, is absurdly in love with a woman who had abandoned him and later disclosed his name to the cops.
Hope for nothing is well-represented in movies that examine mortality, as well. In Verdict the crime lord Reza Ma’rufi, ponders the insignificance or heechness of life:
When I was young, Sadeq Hedayat told me something that’s still lingering in my mind. He said: “everyone has a great asset, which is taking their life. If you feel blue … if you are lonely … if no one comes to see you … go for your asset.”
In the last sequence of Verdict, a gang member, madly in love with his disenchanted girlfriend, sets a plot to be killed by the person he loves the most. In his last words to her, he says: “I liked to be killed by your verdict, by love’s verdict.” Both of these characters were infatuated with gaining more impact in the gang hierarchy, yet both seem to be constantly thinking about death, as an inevitable part of their lives. Life and death in this film and many other Iranian films are represented in the same ken. Death is not the end of life; it is the continuity of life.
Pondering death, and by extension, life, is one of the most recurrent topics of Iranian films. It is also directly connected with the aesthetics of hope for nothing. Generally speaking, awareness of death and being mindful of the fleeting state of being are among the pillars of Persian culture. The terms inshallah (God willing), and agar ghesmat basheh (if fate would have it) are common parlance. In classical literature (such as Rumi’s and Khayyam’s poetry) and modern literature (as in Sadeq Hedayat’s and Shahrnoush Parsipour’s fictional works and Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry) life and death are constantly positioned side by side. The transitory situation of life, of happy or wonderful moments, are constantly communicated to readers of Persian literature. The philosophy of seizing the moment and being mindful of the present time, as best represented in Khayyam’s poetry and some fictional works by Hedayat, have roots in this deep-seated cultural awareness of death. Films such as Taste of Cherry (1999, dir. Abbas Kiarostami), The Wind Will Cary Us (2000, dir. Abbas Kiarostami), At Five in the Afternoon (2005, dir. Samira Makhmalbaf), About Elly (2009, dir. Asghar Farhadi), and Dance with me (2019, dir. Soroush Sehat) are only a handful of films that depict death as an extension of life.
No other Iranian filmmaker has explored the question of death and embracing nothingness more deeply than Abbas Kiarostami. Death is the most visible topic in at least two films by Kiarostami. In Taste of Cherry, death and reaching the point of nothingness is portrayed as a simple reality of life. The narrative follows a driver on the outskirts of Tehran in search of someone to aid in his burial after he commits suicide. In this film, ending one’s life is not portrayed as depressing or horrible, but as a (liberating) choice for an individual in search of the meaning of life. The driver encounters three individuals in his quest. An immature soldier who is shying away from facing contradictory questions about life and death, a middle-aged seminarian who is dead-certain about the impiety associated with committing suicide, and an old free-spirited man who had already pondered the possibility of ending his own life, yet decided that life has much more to offer. The old man believes that it would be a shame to give up observing the sunrise and the moonlight, or to give up the taste of mulberries and cherries. The soldier represents youth and immaturity, the middle-aged seminarian represents the absolutism that comes with gaining a limited understanding of life, and the old man represents the enlightenment of a wise man who has given up everything to attain the liberation associated with nothingness. The driver’s travelling on the dusty roads, far from crowds of people, and his encounters with the three people resemble a mystic’s quest in finding the Truth, embodied in Attar’s Conference of Birds as the Seven Domains of Love (Haft Shahr-e Eshq). The last domain, according to Attar is pure destitution/Faghr and annihilation, or nirvana/Fanaa. When the mystic loses everything, he attains enlightenment. The driver travels from one destination/manzel to the next in order to gain this state of enlightenment. The ending of the narrative does not make it clear whether the driver commits suicide or not, but what the spectator sees in the last two sequences still gives the viewer a sense of liberation and relief. First, the driver takes his last companion to the garden, where he works. The slow-moving camera patiently displays trees, flowers, and birds, dancing under a beam of sunlight. Metaphorically, the driver is eventually enlightened. The next sequence shows the man in a pitch dark grave. His silhouette is cast by the lightning of a thunderstorm. It may or may not be the end of his life. The film does not bother to clarify this point. The last sequence, shot with a handheld camera, shows the driver reaching for a cigarette. He is accompanied by the film crew, and Kiarostami himself shows up. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five version of “St. James Infirmary” plays. The camera pans horizontally to show an abundance of greenery. Kiarostami cuts the scene. The soldiers, the green scenery, and the cheerful music pronounce a fresh start to life. A rejuvenated hope is born.
In The Wind Will Carry Us, death is represented as a magnificent, emancipatory experience in a village whose residents live a long life, but celebrate death as an inevitable part of life. The film bears the title of a poem by Forough Farrokhzad. In this poem, Farrokhzad eloquently talks about the transitory state of being, which passes like a breeze of darkness. Inspired by the poem, the movie shows the presence of death in everyday activities. The lead character, Behzad, initially fears death, but eventually becomes at ease with it and views it as another stage of life. His trip to the village is initiated in order to film the funeral procession of an old lady. The funeral is meant to be an exotic and spectacular event, worth making an ethnographical documentary about. In the end, his journey turns into a spiritual quest to contemplate life and death and to seize the moment, as the local doctor advised Behzad, by reciting the following poem by Khayyam:
They say paradise is pleasant with houries (beautiful women) I say wine (earthly pleasure) is more pleasant Take the present to the promise A drum sounds pleasing from afar
The uncertain approach that is seen in Kiarostami’s movie is also represented in Farhadi’s About Elly. About Elly raises the spectators’ hope for finding answers to the mysteries surrounding the character of Elly, her relations with other characters, and the reasons behind her disappearance. The search for Elly in the film is metaphorically significant.