Close to the truth

by Ruby

I was attempting to watch Ten by Abbas Kiarostami but accidentally selected 10 on Ten, which is a discussion of the film structured as a series of lessons, with topics ranging from setting to actors. They’re filmed by a camera fixed on the passenger side of the car as Kiarostami is driving and talking. It echoes the camera placement and setting of the film Ten, which follows a woman taxi driver in Tehran, showing her conversations with various passengers. Here’s a sample:

Although the film’s not a documentary, he used real people, some of whom (like the taxi driver and her son) had the same relationship to one another in the film that they do in real life. He describes this as being “independent from everyday reality, but close to the truth.”

Lots of interesting commentary… on the relationship (or mutual non-dependence) between sound and image, the connection between the clothes people wear and their inner worlds, ambiguity (“it’s ambiguity that attracts us to a work, not understanding”), omission (which “involves the viewer in making the film – we create not by adding but subtracting”), and the filmmaker’s responsibility “to accept reality ,even when it does not comply with our taste.”

Still need to finish the film. I watched it several years ago and remember it being engaging and powerful. I’m thinking a lot about documentary these days as I progress through the documentary workshop I’m taking. I find a lot of overlap between reality and artifice in so many films. Of course there’s the reality show industry which artlessly combines what I would consider to be the worst of both worlds. But here is a film with non-professional actors playing themselves, or something quite close to themselves. And on the other hand, many of the documentary films I’ve been watching lately show situations that are generated or facilitated partly for the purposes of the film (The Cove, for example, or the charming short film Caine’s Arcade).

The lines are blurry. But do we really need them? Isn’t creativity all just a great experiment?