An invitation to observe.
1. Five: Titled as “Five Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu,” the film consist of five 15 to 20 minutes episodes with a short piece of music in between them. The episodes are unedited (apart from the last one) single takes with a fixed frame of a digital camera. Shot on the shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, where Kiarostami originally went to write a screenplay for another film.
A little piece of wood being tossed by the waves; people taking a morning walk on the beach; a playful group of dogs on the beach; a group of noisy ducks walking from one side to other; a reflection of the moon in a pond accompanied with music created by a chorus of frogs. As it has been established here, Five is not a film which can be explained; it has to be experienced. In my opinion, a very rewarding experience.
2. It is a Kiarostami film: I have seen Five in a festival screening along with few of my friends. These friends of mine have seen many Kiarostmi films including Taste of Cherry, Close-up and Wind will Carry Us and they loved those films a lot (they hadn't seen Ten at that point of time). They were as much excited about seeing the latest Kiarostami film as I was. But after seeing Five they came out completely disappointed or rather angry.
Even though we saw many other films that day apart from Five, when we met up in the evening for dinner Five came up for discussion again. My three friends wrote off the film unanimously and later the discussion progressed on to questioning the credibility of Kiarostami as a filmmaker. I was the only one for the film, because I strongly believe that a film like Five has to be seen in the context of the film maker's journey. With almost 20 films to his credit and number of masterpieces, he has contributed to the world cinema. We the audience are now responsible to look at a Kiarostami film in the context of his artistic growth. It will be unfair to separate the film from the filmmaker and appreciate it or reject it.
Ten years back just before Kiarostami made 'Taste of Cherry' he was going through serious personal trauma and was faced with questions of choosing life or death. That experience was followed by the making of the film 'Taste of Cherry', which is about a man who is looking for someone to help him commit suicide. Over the later ten years, Kiarostami has changed a lot, so have his films. And it will be cruel to insist that Kiarostami should continue to make films like what he made ten years back because we the audience loved those old films.
To me Five is a continuation of the journey Kiarostami started with 'ABC Africa', and followed with 'Ten' and explained in 'Ten on Ten'.
3. One word film: Just to refresh the memory, let me repeat this incident - In one of the screenings of 'Ten' in a film school, some film students told Kiarostami, "Just because you are a famous director, you can get away with something like this. If we do it, no one will tolerate some thing so simple!" In reply, Kiarostami narrates Kundera's story: Kundera relates how his father's vocabulary diminished with age and, at the end of his life, was reduced to two words: "It's strange! It's strange!" Of course, he hadn't reached that point because he had nothing much to say anymore but because those two words effectively summed up his life's experience.
At the end of that conversation, Kiarostami said: "Ten is my own 'two words'. It resumes almost everything. I say 'almost' because I'm already thinking about my next film. A one-word film perhaps."
The next film he made was 'Five'. If 'Ten' was made with just two camera angles, in 'Five' Kiarostami further reduced the point of view to one. If 'Ten' had 10 edited episodes, 'Five' consist of 5 long single takes. If 'Ten' had few actors, then 'Five' had none. And most importantly, if 'Ten' was an effort to make a film without the presence and direct involvement of a director, in 'Five' the director gives up his complete control and becomes just a spectator.
4. End of Cinema: Ever since the making of Ten or may be even before that, many digital films have sprouted all over the world. A digital film revolution has been predicted by many including Kiarostami. But the trouble was most of the people who went in for digital medium, chose it as a cheaper alternative for the 35mm film they always wanted to make, but couldn't find a financer. As it should be, they were disappointed with the out come, because the image 'quality' of these digital films were much inferior to the celluloid one.
As a result most of the discussions going on today about digital filmmaking tend to revolve around the 'resolution' and 'economics' rather than what this new medium can offer to a filmmaker or a possibility of a new kind of cinema. Many purists of celluloid cinema refuse to even call it 'cinema', and the digital evangelists are happy with the slogan that 'now any one can make a film.' But none have discussed or are even aware of the enormous artistic possibilities digital filmmaking offers.
When every one was trying hard to achieve 35mm quality through digital filmmaking, Kiarostami made digital films which 35mm can never ever achieve. First in 'Ten' and now with 'Five'; which demonstrate it more than any other film. 'Five' liberates itself from the elements of conventional cinema like quality of images, composition, angles, camera movements, acting, editing and esentially the trump card of all directors-the mise en scène. What Jean-Luc Godard famously said seven years back makes more sense now: "Cinema begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami."
By making 'Five', Kiarostami in a way declared the insignificance of these conventional elements in his cinema. Like it is said in a Zen poem 'It is not the clay the potter throws, which gives the pot its usefulness, but the space within the shape'.Thus with 'Five', Kiarostami replaces all these so called 'critical' elements which he removed from cinema with something very essential not only to filmmaking but to life itself -'observation'.
5. An invitation to observe : 'Five' is a film made by observation and it is about observation and it demands observation. In these five single takes many interesting things happen on the frame without any form of manipulation from the director. He and his camera just take on the role of an observer who is willing to spend time. The film also provides an opportunity for the audience to do the same. There is enough time given within the film for observation and contemplation. Quite unlike the earlier Kiarostami films which are open ended and leave the audience with a lot of unresolved questions and encourage them to keep on going back to the film seeking answers. In 'Five' it is more of the experience of that moment in which one watching the film becomes more critical. As Kiarostami put it "It is an invitation to observe things which, in oneself, are not particularly worthy to be looked at. It is a means of stopping and of concentrating."
But while the film engages itself in observing the nature around; the camera which facilitates this observation doesn't move around to catch any action. Action falls inside the static frame set by the filmmaker. For example the drifting wood in the first episode breaks into two pieces precisely when we are looking for some thing 'dramatic' to happen in the frame. In another incident in the fourth episode when all the ducks are walking in one direction, suddenly one of them stops in the middle of the frame, turns and starts walking back and the other ducks start to follow. To me this is the most interesting and magical quality about the film; nothing is scripted, created or manipulated. All the events just happen in front of a fixed frame of a rolling camera. Did nature play out this drama in front of Kiarostami's camera? or was he lucky enough to be there to record it when it was happening? Or do these things happen all the time if one is really willing to observe?
" It is as if I recited a poem which had already been written. All already exists, it is there to be seen, included and understood. I simply observed it. It let me escape from the obligation of narration and of the slavery of mise en scène.”
- Abbas Kiarostami.