Abbas Kiarostami RIP

johnny_ultimate

Awful news this evening: the great Iranian filmmaker, and one of the most brilliant directors of any era, Abbas Kiarostami has died aged 76.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/04/abbas-kiarostami-palme-dor-winning-iranian-film-maker-dies

There's only a few directors out there whose style just perfectly gelled with everything I love about this wonderful artform, and Kiarostami was one. His films were politically, philosophically and socially bold, addressing complex subject matter with incredible empathy and humanity. Formally, he had few if any living contemporaries - his approach was observant and artful, probing and respectful. They were films infatuated with cinema and its possibilities, but also its limitations. As clichéd as it is, they were films as much for the brain as they were for the heart.

I haven't seen anywhere close to his entire filmography, but each of the half dozen or so I have were all reliably beautiful and inspiring. His last film, Like Someone in Love, is easily among the very finest of this decade.

Nobody, incidentally, has ever been able to direct a car scene like Kiarostami could direct a car scene

"A true artist is someone who is close to the people and is prepared to go to the cinema with them", observes Sabzian in the timeless masterpiece that is Close Up. RIP, then, to Kiarostami - a truer artist there has never been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_tGkf_jnCk

Sad Professor

2016… the year that keeps taking.