Why I love Abbas Kiarostami’s Homework

Through my lim­it­ed explo­ration of the Iran­ian New Wave, I’ve found a gen­uine­ness com­pa­ra­ble to poet­ry. I often write my own poems, and I find that these come from the very deep­est, strongest erup­tions of ​‘expe­ri­ence’. Poet­ry writes dif­fer­ent­ly to prose, in that every word feels like it must fit right where it is, and any change in com­ma or full stop will ruin the hyper­bol­ic repli­ca­tion of said ​‘expe­ri­ence’. To me, poet­ry is not so much a sto­ry with a les­son, but rather a dis­play of what it tru­ly means to feel.

A con­nec­tion between poet­ry and Home­work feels almost imper­a­tive to make, sprout­ing from Abbas Kiarostami’s own con­fu­sion on how the film must exist. What does it por­tray, and how does it por­tray it? In the first few min­utes of the film, Kiarosta­mi is asked whether Home­work would be a fic­tion film, to which he replies, ​“I don’t know,” stop­ping him­self from declar­ing it a doc­u­men­tary. What restricts this declaration?

Kiarostami’s dis­cus­sion with the chil­dren of Shahid Masu­mi school about their own rela­tion­ship with home­work is stitched togeth­er between shots of the cam­era itself. To me, this acts as a refusal of the viewer’s antic­i­pa­tion for the heartache of these strug­gling chil­dren to exist as just fic­tion when it isn’t. As he speaks to the chil­dren, the con­ver­sa­tions high­light their trou­bling jour­neys in com­plet­ing their home­work. Their many obsta­cles include their parent’s illit­er­a­cy, a lack of under­stand­ing of the task, and car­toons. Through their respons­es comes a poignant, heart­break­ing aware­ness of their youth. Five and six-year-olds, with minds built to enjoy the sim­pler, more jovial things in life, have been mold­ed to under­stand and accept ter­ror, grief, and punishment.

When asked to cite their future jobs, every poten­tial option is giv­en with one con­sis­tent rea­son: ​“to kill Sad­dam”. The audi­ence is thor­ough­ly remind­ed of the his­tor­i­cal back­ground Home­work takes place in – the Iran-Iraq war. This con­flict is one I per­son­al­ly con­nect with, as my par­ents lived through it, and wit­nessed par­al­lel effects from their side in Iraq. They often dis­close sim­i­lar anec­dotes – a mere 30 min­utes of car­toons, which they still trea­sure deeply, fol­lowed by end­less war footage, and con­sis­tent con­dem­na­tion of Iran. From Kiarostami’s home in Iran he is able to con­nect with those his gov­ern­ment per­ceive as the ​‘ene­my’, bridg­ing the gap through his art­work and choos­ing to find a com­mon­al­i­ty, rather than step­ping down and strength­en­ing the divide.

This is where Homework’s pow­er is made evi­dent – it isn’t afraid to indict the back­bone of a cul­ture that can be so cru­el, leav­ing us with shards of ​“cul­ture” built off of false ide­olo­gies and bro­ken morals ground­ed hun­dreds of years ago. Morals we are too scared to throw away, and that are main­tained through – as Kiarosta­mi empha­sizes – a fail­ing educa­tive sys­tem. It is fear that builds bar­ri­ers between where we are and try­ing to move for­ward, and it is the same fear that con­trols how chil­dren are raised in this tra­di­tion – where dis­ci­pline through pun­ish­ment and abuse, and force-fed pro­pa­gan­da, are allowed to exist freely.

But break­ing down years of these out­looks on the ways we go about life begs the ques­tion, what do we do about it? How do we fix some­thing so deeply ingrained in our geog­ra­phy, that it is thought that doing it any oth­er way would be impossible?

Vis­it­ing Kiarostami’s film on the child­hood expe­ri­ence was like vis­it­ing a place I lived in ever so briefly, with a cul­ture ever so sim­i­lar to mine and that of my par­ents. Tra­di­tion is built on a quite tired con­struct, an end­less rule­book held over your head at all times, and a threat of dam­aged rep­u­ta­tion fol­low­ing behind. Where her­itage and hon­or stand above rea­son, suf­fer­ing fol­lows. Cor­nered by what’s expect­ed of you and what you must be, these pre­req­ui­sites dis­re­gard any flour­ish­ing cre­ativ­i­ty. Kiarostami’s view is end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, and not just fas­ci­nat­ing, but real, cross­ing bor­ders to enter a ban­quet of unan­swered ques­tions, ques­tions most are too afraid to even attempt answer­ing. But to ignore and refuse any ques­tions, would be to throw away any chance of a solution.

Return­ing to my com­par­i­son of Kiarostami’s work to poet­ry, I found that on a third watch, I was met with a pro­found real­iza­tion of what the film real­ly is – one that left me unable to think of much else for the days that fol­lowed. Kiarosta­mi, the named direc­tor, steps down and allows for the ​‘nar­ra­tive’ to flow unprompt­ed through the words of the chil­dren. For Home­work is not just a film about the chil­dren in Iran, it is made for the chil­dren in Iran. And it is made by the chil­dren in Iran. This is their very deep­est, strongest erup­tion of ​‘expe­ri­ence’, whether they may real­ize it or not, although I strong­ly believe that they do. This is their wish for change, and this is their want: to be allowed to love car­toons more than they love homework.

Home­work stran­gles me with feel­ing. It teeters on the precipice of being too much because the por­tray­al feels tan­gi­ble. I’ve seen the word ​‘verisimil­i­tude’ used in ref­er­ence to the Iran­ian New Wave (take, for exam­ple, Kiarostami’s Close-Up). The word is defined as ​‘the appear­ance of being true’, but it feels dis­hon­est to apply it to Kiarostami’s work. With­in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, Home­work exists as a spe­cial fea­ture along­side The Kok­er Tril­o­gy, three movies about a vil­lage, and the chil­dren of that vil­lage. The true impact of the doc­u­men­tary lies in this very fact – how it recon­tex­tu­al­izes the rest of what we see from Kiarostami’s fil­mog­ra­phy. It gives us the back­ground and unde­ni­able truth that under­lines every film he makes about the child­hood expe­ri­ence. Even when his films are ​‘fic­tion’, the very exis­tence of Home­work along­side them begs for the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of that word. When Kiarosta­mi cre­ates ​‘fic­tion’, is it ever real­ly that?

In cre­at­ing Home­work, Kiarosta­mi offers a real­i­ty more dev­as­tat­ing­ly, hor­ri­fy­ing­ly real than any fic­tion. It is a tran­scrip­tion, ver­ba­tim of the pun­ish­ing real­i­ty it mirrors.