The Koker Trilogy

The great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) made his international reputation with The Koker Trilogy, which consists of three films connected by place, theme, and complex references. Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987), Kiarostami’s first fiction feature, follows the simple but resonant adventure of a schoolboy who travels to a nearby village (against the express orders of his mother) to return homework to a friend. Kiarostami shot the film in Koker, which suffered a devastating earthquake in 1990. And Life Goes On (1992) follows a filmmaker and his son as they journey to the remote Koker area to find the children who acted in the earlier film, where they witness streams of homeless people hauling food and equipment to makeshift shelters. The earlier film is naturalistic and looks at the adult world from the perspective of a child, while the latter is more of a fictional semi-documentary capturing the strength of the human spirit in the face of disaster. Even more self-reflexive is Through the Olive Trees (1994), a fictionalized drama about the making of And Life Goes On that shifts from the making of a film to the odyssey of a lovesick young actor playing the husband of a young woman he has been forbidden to marry. Kiarostami’s richly layered style and structure belie the simplicity and immediacy of his films, which explore increasingly complex relationships between actor and character, as well as story and storyteller. It is through these films that viewers see the evolution of Kiarostami’s art and storytelling. Extras include Kiarostami’s superb 1989 documentary Homework, audio commentary by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum (co-authors of Abbas Kiarostami) on And Life Goes On, the 1994 documentary Abbas Kiarostami: Truth and Dreams, new and archival interviews, and a booklet with an essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)