A year ago I read some tweets from Bud Smith, one of my favorite writers, talking about the Koker Trilogy. It's a series of films directed by Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian director. They take place in a series of small villages in northern Iran.
I like learning about art from writers I admire. It's how I've discovered most of the art I like. I rarely discover something on my own. Usually I hear someone else talk about it and find the concept interesting.
At the time, I was leaving a really difficult job.
I had a week off before I started a new job and decided I'd watch one film each day. I watched Mandy, starring Nicholas Cage. I watched a bunch of Godard movies. I watched a documentary about Werner Herzog.
I thought about watching the Koker trilogy but it seemed outside the realm of what I could handle at that moment.
My brain was full of trouble. Things I'd seen at work. Things I needed to process. I was careful what I put into it.
A year went by. But I kept thinking about watching those films. I saw other people on Twitter talk about them.
It's funny how some things find their way to you at the right time.
Funny how this seems to happen especially with films, novels.
Last week I decided to watch them, this series of three films.
They were in my thoughts for days.
Here's some things they made me think about.
Where is the Friend's House?
A little boy must run to a neighboring village in search of another little boy. They share a class. They have identical notebooks. He has taken home his friend's notebook by mistake. If he doesn't return it, his friend will be expelled by their harsh teacher.
Every society has its norms and expectations. It seems common that children are expected to be obedient and respectful in most societies. This makes sense. But a part of youth is believing lots of things are possible. I remember feeling this way.
Knowing that things could be done if I tried hard enough.
You have a reservoir of energy in youth that diminishes with every year.
Ahmed, the little boy in this film, runs up and down cobbled side streets. He runs through a small grove of olive trees. He runs up and down a hill that changes color in the light, from brown to green.
He has an understanding of what will happen to his friend if he fails. He understands how the world works. But he also has an idea of what is possible. That he can find his friend. That he can put right what he did wrong.
This is his responsibility to another little boy. Another person. It is important.
Ahmed meets many adults who seem to point him in different, seemingly contradictory directions.
Toward the end of his search, an old man who has made many of the doors in town tries to help Ahmed. He is the only person in the film who seems happy to help. But as they walk, his relationship is more complicated. He wants to tell Ahmed about the carpentry work he has done.
The life he has lived.
Building things with his hands.
How this place they walk through has changed.
Ahmed doesn't have time to talk to him.
The world seems mysterious and incredible to Ahmed's eyes. Or at least to our eyes. My eyes. This small northern village is incredible to look at. There is obviously great poverty here. But there is also a great sense of life. A way to be. An idea, many ideas, of what a proper life is. The people Ahmed encounters speak about it. The corridors, side streets, homes and potted flowers seem to embody it.
Life, And Nothing More...
The characters in this film have seen Where is the Friend's House.
A man and his son search for the young boy who played Ahmed.
They are trying to drive to Koker, the small town the boy lived in. The town the first film is centered around. Just as Ahmed had to sneak out of Koker to search for his friend, this man and his son are trying to find their way into Koker. But there's been a devastating earthquake. It's unclear if the little boy who played Ahmed is alive. It's unclear if anyone in the first film is alive.
Along the way, we see the same hill from the first film, the one that changes color. The one that seems like an image out of a fable. Of course, for those of us that don't live in Koker, it is just that. But for the people whose lives are in this small village, it's just a hill. It's part of every day life.
There's a house I drive past every day for work. It's fascinated me since the first time I saw it. It has a massive yard and a little wooden drawbridge you have to cross, walking over the acequia, in order to reach it. It's a very haunting, magical place for me. But for the people in that neighborhood, it's just a house.
Throughout the film, the man's son talks about the world cup. Who he thinks will win. He meets another little boy and they argue about it, about sports, about the importance of these sports to their small lives. This seems to happen in the background of his father's world.
The father meets many of the people from Koker, including some who were in the fiirst film. They tell him their troubles. He seems surprised that they've picked up and moved on as best they can.
They tell him about how many friends they've lost. Family members. And what they're doing now.
Thre is a young man, a newlywed. He married his bride only days ago.
Not before the earthquake, but after.
They don't know what their lives will be. But they go on living. They want to be married. They want to be newlyweds. Even as they grieve so many people they've lost, they begin their marriage.
The man offers blessings to most people he meets. Says he hopes god will be with them.
Just as Ahmed found person after person who told him no, I don't know where your friend's house is, now this man finds person after person who tells him, no I don't know where that little boy is.
He can't get to Koker. The roads have been destroyed. And his car is too small to make it through the alternate route.
The man and his son find a group of people who have set up tents, who are gathered in one place and who are preparing to watch the world cup. In spite of their lives being ripped apart, they are excited for the game.
The Gray Notebook is a collection of diary entries written during the spanish flu pandemic by Josep Pla, a spanish journalist and author.
Pla writes, "inevitably we all have, have had, or will have influenza." (p. 16).
In the same entry, Pla goes on to discuss the books he is reading. He talks about what he sees on his walks.
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was relieved to see mixed-martial arts come back to tv. In July of 2020, I excitedly watched Kamaru Usman fight Jorge Masvidal, thinking that even if I became ill and died a few days later, at least I could watch these two athletes. I could talk to my friends about it on the phone, even though we weren't in the same place.
I could watch it while they watched it.
We could be together in this one, small way.
I did this week after week, looking ahead to mma fights, UFC pay-per-views, thinking over and over, at least if I die, I get to watch this fight.
Through The Olive Trees
The final film in the trilogy, Through The Olive Trees, is sort of a love story. That's probably why it's my favorite.
Just as the second film takes a step back, the last one in the series takes an even further step back. In this movie, the first two films exist as just that: films that everyone has seen.
The director of Life finds actors to appear in the film. The newly weds that appeared in the sequel film have, perhaps, an even sadder life in this one.
The young man and his bride, in "reality" are not married. They are just playing newlyweds in a movie.
Hossein, who plays the newlywed husband, badly wants to marry Tahereh, the young woman who plays his bride in Life.
But her grandmother forbids it. And because her parents were both killed in the earthquake that ravaged Koker and the surrounding villages, her grandmother is the person who will make this decision: who Tahereh will marry, what her life will look like.
Nature takes away some of our choices. Culture takes away others.
Hossein speaks often, throughout the film, with the director. The older man is sympathetic and even takes some of Hossein's advice, incorporating local customs into the film at his suggestion. He listens to the younger man describe his troubles.
He listens to a young person do what young people do best: voice his objections to his own life.
I once heard Chuck Palahniuk talk in an interview about Joseph Campbell's concept of a "second father." The figure who guides a young person through their tumultuous years. Who provides structure when their parents no longer can. I couldn't help thinking of the second father when I saw the director speak to Hossein, a glimmer of affection in his eye.
I have had several of these second fathers. Bosses, teachers. Palahniuk said, "you have to sacrifice your youth to something."
Just as in childhood, we believe that much is possible, in young adulthood we despair as we discover it may not be.
Hossein tells the director that he thinks the rich should marry the poor. Why have two houses, he asks, when they could share one? That way someone without a house could receive a place to live. The director affectionately asks Hossein why two rich people would not marry and then simply rent out the second house instead. Hossein cannot answer this.
It is incredibly painful to lose your idealism. Letting it go is a process we all go through.
As Tahereh sits silently across from Hossein on the film set, he tells her his wishes, his hopes of making a good life for her, though she is an orphan. He imagines being a good husband, a good man to her. And he asks that she respond. That she give him some kind of answer.
Hossein doesn't give up on Tahereh, goes on believing she may want him too. That she would marry him if not for her grandmother. If not for what is expected of them.
I hoped he was right, watching it. I am allowed to hope this only as someone watching the film.
You have to let go of your idealism. Your convictions can be with you until your deathbed. But idealism is only for the young.
As we age, we forget what is possible. Or maybe we realize that many things simply aren't possible.
Tahereh and Hossein walk together into a grove of Olive trees. We, as an audience, hope they can find a way to live in the world. And we hope they will be together. Because this is a movie. It's something that could happen onscreen. Something we could see.
Culture makes some of our decisions for us. Others are made by nature.
The choices that are ours to make are the most important parts of our lives. And yearning, this part of young adulthood, is something we never forget.
We always yearn.
The difference is whether we believe our yearning is justified. Whether we have faith in it.
The images that are most moving to me are images of yearning. The image of Tahereh and Hossein walking into the grove of olive trees. The idea that, perhaps, there is a future that is decent.
Even for these two people.
Even though there are earthquakes and even though there is culture.
