• And Life Goes On

8/30/23 (Wed)

The alternative English title of this 1992 work is “Life and Nothing Else”, which appears (courtesy of Google Translate) to be the literal translation of the Persian. The official English title is taken from a line in the film.

The director revisited the location of his 1987 film Where Is the Friend’s House? after the colossal earthquake that decimated the area in 1990 to confirm if the children in the film were safe. His experience led him to turn that quest itself into a documentary of sorts. He is played by an actor who drives in from Tehran with his young son in a French car holding a French flyer for the film, a city slicker going into the countryside (to a Vivaldi accompaniment). He has difficulty in locating the town due to the horrific road conditions and has to ask many parties for help, which becomes the core of the film.

The Tehran-raised son is more interested in the grasshopper he finds along the way and the upcoming World Cup match than the devastation everywhere. With no understanding of how things looked before, he sees the life around them rather than the death. In fact, that seems the general attitude of the people along the way: a couple get married the day after the quake despite the many relatives killed in their determination to lead a normal life; a man who has lost a sister and several others is putting up an antenna to allow everyone to see the soccer (“Life goes on,” he shrugs); others, especially children, speak of the destruction with resignation rather than tears. Only two people evidence a negative attitude, a shopkeeper clearing debris whom the boy asks for a coke (“How can you ask that at a time like this?”) and a withered old woman. Others are too busy rebuilding their lives, represented by constant movement throughout the film.

The son recognizes the actor who played the old man in the earlier film, surprised that he is healthier than he was portrayed. The actor tells him humorously that he was asked to wear a prop to look hunched over and was made up to look older, complaining that films should make you look younger, a sly comment on the blurry line between fantasy and reality explored in this film. He also notes that the house that the director has taken him to is just the movie house; his own home for now is a tent. Of course, that could also be lines given to him by the director – as in his earlier Close-Up, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not.

The father and son also run into the green-eyed boy who had the backache in the first film, and the father later meets a kid he doesn’t recognize who had a bit part as well. No one knows what happened to the boys in Koker given the lack of communications among towns amid the ruins.

He finally learns from the man setting up the antenna that the two children are in fact alive and just passed that very spot several minutes earlier. He rushes to catch them, and we see two faraway figures on the horizon that may be them. Unfortunately his old car is unable to climb the steep hill, portrayed in a great sustained long shot. He appears to give up at first and drives off, but comes racing back into the scene for another try. We see him in the distance arrive at the top of the hill, where he picks up a walker who had helped him earlier – and the film stops abruptly. We’re deprived of the catharsis when he, presumably, meets the young actors that he’s been looking for the entire film. A strange and rather unsatisfying ending.

The characters are clearly reciting lines for the most part, using a monotone that flattened their emotions. It wasn’t exactly natural, but because it cut across all ages and classes, it worked in a strange way. Many critics seem to prefer this film to the first in the so-called trilogy for its surreal mix of fantasy and reality. While I found the first far more engrossing in terms of caring about the people, this is a worthy addition.