• Where Is the Friend’s House?

8/27/23 (Sun)

I happened upon Kiarostami’s 1987 work after seeing his fascinating Close-Up from a few years later. The devastating 1990 earthquake in Iran apparently led to two follow-up films, producing what is called the Koker Trilogy after the town in which they’re set. But obviously that wasn’t planned when this film was made.

Ahmad is horrified to discover that he has accidentally brought home his friend Mohammad Reza’s notebook. The teacher had reduced the friend to tears that very day for forgetting the notebook and doing his homework on loose paper instead, ripping up the paper and threatening him with expulsion if he forgets the notebook again. Ahmad is determined to return the notebook to keep his friend out of trouble, but only knows vaguely that the boy lives somewhere in a nearby village. When he asks his mother for permission to go there, she thinks he’s just looking for an excuse to goof off. She orders him to stay, do his homework and help with the chores. She then tells him to go buy bread, and he spots an opportunity. He sneaks off with the notebook via the distinctive zigzag route up the hill to the village several kilometers away.

He seeks help and directions from the scattering of people along the way, but the adults are all dismissive, echoing the teacher’s belief that children should speak only when spoken to. No one seems willing or able to give him a straight answer. He overhears one man being addressed with the same last name as the friend and, thinking this might be the father, follows him hopefully, only to discover that it’s a different family. He learns that the boy has gone to Ahmad’s own village, so he runs back down the hill, only to learn that he has again followed a false lead. He rushes back up the hill and approaches an old man, who says he knows the home and will take Ahmad there. He lumbers along slowly, obviously happy to have someone to talk to, and speaks wistfully of his days as a door maker. The boy grows increasingly worried since the day is coming to an end. Unfortunately the home that the boy is led to is that of the same-named person encountered earlier. Not wanting to make the old man feel bad, Ahmad pretends to have passed on the notebook. He tries to run along but is held back by the man’s slow pace. As they part, the man gives Ahmad a flower. Ahmad thanks him, puts it absent-mindedly in the notebook, and returns home in the darkness. Unable to eat, he does his homework but remains troubled.

The next day, he is absent from school. The teacher begins checking the notebooks of the students. As Mohammed Reza becomes more and more anxious, Ahmad appears just in time. It turns out that he found a solution: he did the homework for his friend overnight and passes him the notebook just as the teacher gets to their desks. As the teacher opens the notebook to check, we see the flower pressed inside, a spark of humanity in the symbol of control and authority.

The short shrift given by adults to the kids and the extreme deference in the other direction suggest a sharply regimented society. The teacher lectures the kids to put their schoolwork before everything, including their families, but that’s clearly not the way things work for the children in this harsh environment. The point for the teacher is not the needs of the children but obedience above all. Similarly, Ahmed’s grandfather has a long passage in which he insists that kids must be punished from time to time to teach them submission (“When I was a kid my dad would give me a penny every week and a beating every other week. He sometimes forgot the penny but never forgot the beating”). He forces Ahmed to go buy him cigarettes just to show him who’s boss despite the kid’s urgency, not to mention the fact that he has cigarettes already. As with the teacher, he concentrates only on making sure that the kid is compliant to his will.

The aged carpenter who laments the replacement of hand-crafted wooden doors by manufactured iron versions is a symbol for a world where humanity is being sacrificed for cold efficiency. (The titles at the film’s start are featured in front of a doorway.) He is the only one to address the child’s needs, though his confusion with the name and his sluggish movements unwittingly compound the boy’s problems.

Kiarostami films in an unforced documentary-like style that makes the fictional events feel spontaneous. He has a nice eye for subtle imagery. In one case, a kid who had been scolded by the teacher for claiming to have a bad back is seen later at home dragging a heavy milk pail for his father, a background detail that is neither highlighted nor lingered upon. It reflects the film’s quiet approach as the pieces slowly come together. Even the just-in-time happy ending was presented in an understated manner that felt real rather than triumphant. I do wish the director had found a better way to integrate the grandfather’s extended speech about discipline and especially the old carpenter’s tottering return to his home, the only scenes not told through Ahmed’s eyes. Still, the gentle rollout of the story, inconsequential on its surface, offers a lovely meditation on the nature of childhood innocence. The portrait of the fragile setting of the villages in the mountains is particularly poignant in retrospect after the earthquake that destroyed them. I’m looking forward to the other two films in this accidental trilogy.

The title is taken from a mystic poem by 20th-century Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri, amalgamated here from several translations:

“Where is the friend’s house?,” asked the rider at twilight.

The skies stood still. The wayfarer

Brushed the branch of light he held at his lips against the dark sands,

Pointed to a poplar and said,

“Before that tree is a garden path greener than God’s dream

Where love is bluer than the feathers of honesty.

Walk to the end of the lane that emerges just beyond maturity,

Then turn towards the flower of solitude.

Stop two steps before the flower at the eternal fountain of earthly myth,

Where a transparent fear will encompass you.

In the flowing intimacy of the space, you will hear a rustling and see a child

Who has climbed a tall pine tree to pluck a chick from a nest of light.

Ask him where the friend’s house is.”

 

Update: The two sequels are discussed here and here.