Through the Olive Trees (1994) and Suspension of Disbelief
Through the Olive Trees (1994) is a film I understood long before I was able to properly watch it. During my first year of college, my screenwriting professor played the film's final sequence over and over again, about 20 times, before allowing us to process it altogether...
Through the Olive Trees (1994) is a film I understood long before I was able to properly watch it. During my first year of college, my screenwriting professor played the film's final sequence over and over again, about 20 times, before allowing us to process it altogether, only later revealing the film's main plotlines, as well as the circumstances that led to the film’s closing sequence. I find that in reflection, this explanation wasn't really needed. In the film's final moments, the dialogue is entirely unintelligible, Houssain’s shouting just a background to the score, which is deliberately laid over the lush scenery of olive trees, the two characters' figures just specs of moving matter on the screen. Hossein follows Tahereh through the tall grass, chasing after her until he catches up, remaining a few feet behind. As soon as you think they will continue onwards as they are, disappearing out of frame, she halts, turning towards him briefly, before continuing on. Hossein stagnantly hovers in place before pivoting, racing full speed back towards the camera, like a race-horse with a cruel owner.
The ending is iconically open-ended, the brisk, rapid score so upbeat and comedic that it is unclear if it signifies a happy resolution for Houssain or a more sardonic rejection, and it's rare for an interpretive ending to feel so right. The scene is a film of its own, each movement of the camera and the characters so exquisitely natural that one doesn't really need to see the rest to know the realities of the characters displayed. Watching the film in its entirety only opened up these possibilities, where the film isn't just a romance or a comedic parody, but a lavish exploration of everyday life, one that continuously reinforces our suspension of disbelief.
Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994) is a delicately woven web of pining and the beauty that springs out of devastation, representing the power cinema grants to its viewers and to the ones who create it. The film stands as the third installment of the Koker trilogy and expands upon the intuitively meta landscape that Kiarostami has created. He wrenches such profound depth from simple and at times desolate circumstances, and the result is a vignette-like narrative that feels more like art than a source of entertainment.
Part of the beauty of Through the Olive Trees (1994) is that it truly practices what it preaches. The meta employed by Kiarostami is far greater than just what's displayed on screen; we watch the process of the filmmaker as he casts actors for his film, who are not merely playing roles but versions of themselves, and the majority of the film depicts the slow and tedious process that filmmaking rests upon. A “film about a film” isn't really considered unique or inventive anymore, and while Kiarostami wasn't the first to do it, his trilogy helped to pioneer the sub-genre not just because he contributed to the concept, but because he was able to broaden the possibilities contained within such a meta.
Through the Olive Trees (1994) is truly more akin to documentary than art house narrative, given the fact that the characters are built off of their nonprofessional actors, but it doesn't feel that way, even when we sit beside characters in cars, as if we aren't viewers but camera operators. The relationship between the characters and their connection to the land they stand upon pervades the archival texture of certain scenes, overwhelming the disconnect that could arise with such a direct meta. This behind-the-scenes delineation isn't the root of what we watch, but a precise tool Kiarostami uses to carve out the complex characters that reside at the core of the film. We do not question the reality we are seeing, but embrace it wholeheartedly, as if we were watching the fictitious film production inconspicuously from the branches.
The film wouldn't be very fun to watch if it felt like you were watching a movie. Other films don't have this issue, not when there is enough to engage with that the “movie-ness” of it all doesn't subtract from the thing itself, but Through the Olive Trees (1994) doesn't have this privilege. Repetition is central to the film in that certain behaviors, events, and dialogue are constantly repeated, and the film becomes circular, where nothing really changes. Tahereh's response to Hossein's endless advances is silence; the same shot is attempted over and over again, and the director has similar interactions with all the people he meets. This would not be successful if not for the tangibility of the landscape and its inhabitants, the emotion which pours out of Hossein’s body language and face, and the real-life devastation that has wracked Koker, the small Iranian village in which the film takes place. Kiarostami doesn't just cue viewers into the individual lives and existences of those he pictures. He uses this distant, underrepresented community as a jumping off point, where humor and wholesomeness develop naturally, unembelished as it is conveyed through a distinct reality.
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