Copyrighted material. Contents can only be used with proper credit to mahmag.org

SHIRIN A film by Abbas Kiarostami

mahmag  •  09 June, 2009

Based on a 12th-century Persian poem, the film-within-the-film is a story of star-crossed love as well known in modern-day Iran as Romeo and Juliet is in the West. Shirin, a beautiful Armenian princess, falls madly in love with a portrait of Khosrow, a young Persian prince, and sets out on horseback to find him, unaware that he has already gone in search of her. ...

.....
SHIRIN
A film by Abbas Kiarostami


Abbas Kiarostami (The Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, 10) is one of the most important, ambitious and rewarding filmmakers at work today. His new film Shirin, a retelling of a classic Persian love story, offers a feast for the imagination of a wholly unexpected kind.

Introduction
What Shirin shows us - and indeed all it shows us - is an audience of more than 100 women who are deeply absorbed in watching a film we never see. We observe instead how the drama plays out on the faces of the audience, seen in close-up, mostly one at a time, illuminated by the flickering light of the screen. It is a mesmerising series of portraits of women young and old, many of them strikingly beautiful, their expressions variously wistful, quizzical, amused, enraptured and distraught. Also helping us to reconstruct the tale for ourselves are the unseen film's impassioned narration, dramatic dialogue, romantic, doom-laden score, and richly evocative sound effects.

Based on a 12th-century Persian poem, the film-within-the-film is a story of star-crossed love as well known in modern-day Iran as Romeo and Juliet is in the West. Shirin, a beautiful Armenian princess, falls madly in love with a portrait of Khosrow, a young Persian prince, and sets out on horseback to find him, unaware that he has already gone in search of her. ...

Shirin makes us acutely aware that the film being watched by the women is imagined differently by each one as she brings her own personality and experience into play with what is happening on screen. To an even greater extent, though, the film that we are watching demands that we use our own imaginations, whether piecing together the unseen melodrama or speculating on the off-screen lives of its female audience. While never failing to engage our emotions, Kiarostami's Shirin also heightens our appreciation of the beguiling, subversive and consoling power of cinematic story-telling.

from iran Heritage
« Prev itemNext item »

Comments

No comments yet. You can be the first!

Leave comment

This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it