Best of the Noughts, #10: 10, by Abbas Kiarostami

I went to see Abbas Kiarostami's film 10 in 2002, on my own, and loved it immediately. It has the sort of immediacy that makes you grin and cry and yet look at yourself as from the outside, during the moment, so that you can appreciate your own reactions. I was expecting a dour cinema lesson from the great Iranian film director, the conceit being so very formal (10 segments, filmed inside a taxi in Tehran) - but the film pulsates with life and wit, and has such depth and sorrow to it, observed in everyday situations. Its political points are made lightly, but have a great acuity.

I haven't seen the film in seven years, so you'll have to bear with me; I'm going on memories. A woman drives a taxi around Tehran, then, and in each segment she picks up a different passenger. In segments 1 and 10, and one segment in between, she ferries her young boy from one part of town to another - he is the only male to appear in the film, which otherwise exists in a purely female sort of dimension. As such, it's only natural to take him as a representation of current masculinity: and being a young boy, he makes for a faintly depressing state of affairs - he is already well versed in the art of brow-beating his mother, and seems to be content in his role as a male tyrant, not questioning his position of power. Of course, he could merely be a spoiled child, but Kiarostami is clearly also training his gaze on Iranian gender politics, and the subjugation of women. With the character of the young boy, he shows us how these behaviours are learnt, and transmitted from generation to generation. It's a beautiful way of making his politics known, and the boy and his mother are beautifully observed.

At the same time, Kiarostami sounds a few positive notes: the boy's mother is newly separated from the boy's father, and making her own living as a taxi driver. She is obviously a modern, intelligent and aware young woman; a pity she is not involved in, say, politics. The boy appears in two other segments, and his relationship with his mother evidently has more to it than his dominance of her: she is smart and deflects his vitriol - perhaps Kiarostami hopes that future generations of women can outwit men, rather than have men come round to the equality of women. The rest of the film is dedicated to some very interesting segments, such as the one when a totally thoughtless, bumbling old woman takes a taxi ride and will not stop talking about her faith, and various saints she worships: in this character, the director quite clearly shows us how the older generation still clings to religion, and contrasts the woman with the more political, more modern concerns of the young divorcee taxi driver. At the same time, being so un-judgmental, he may be saying that he understands the solace that older generations found in faith; the younger generation seem so fragmented and - interestingly, in this film which drives around town for an hour and a half - directionless.

Two other segments are still memorable: one in which the driver picks up a prostitute, who gets in by mistake, thinking the driver is male and a customer. The prostitute seems totally senseless, laughingly describing her job as a bit of a laugh - and seems to want to make a parallel between herself and the taxi driver, and the way they both serve men. At the same time, Kiarostami finds a very human doubt behind her seeming inanity, under the questioning of the taxi driver. In another episode, she picks up an acquaintance of hers, who has just, dangerously, shaved her head. The driver asks to see her head, and the woman aquiesces - and this is the first time a woman removes her headscarf in the film: until this passage, the headscarf had come to seem natural, and the removing of it registers as a real shock. With this statement, the young woman is making political capital of her own body. It's sensitively dealt with, and yet you feel the pain behind these characters and their sense of being stuck in an oppressive regime.

I wonder if Kiarostami saw Jim Jarmusch's film Night On Earth, and took his inspiration from the way that film examined a cross-cut of society through several taxi journeys. Where Jarmusch allowed his film to free-wheel in so many different directions, Kiarostami keeps his firmly focused on one group of people, much like his fixed camera (which nevertheless gives the film a stern beauty), and his rigour lends the film so much humanity. It's a brilliant, brilliant film, and one that is endlessly surprising upon viewing and exciting to remember.


Listening to: A.C. Newman, The Slow Wonder