From Iran, Japan and France, the work known in short as Five is one of Abbas Kiarostami’s most brilliant, most beautiful films. Digitally videographed, it consists of five long takes with a mostly stationary camera at different spots by the seashore. Or that is what appears to be the case, since the Unseen Hand of Kiarostami has intervened, arranging Nature and “reality” the better for us to perceive these with fresh eyes, fresh ears—as though, according to critic Simon Gray, we were “seeing [and hearing] for the first time.”
Five is Kiarostami’s tribute to perhaps cinema’s greatest artist, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu, on the occasion of the centennial of Ozu’s birth. The five segments are unified by the theme of separation. Indeed, Ozu’s cinema is about separation, loss and longing. Other Ozuvian themes and elements weigh in during the course of the film, including Ozuvian calm and acceptance. Five is the highest kind of tribute by one artist to another, because it is unmistakably a Kiarostami film, yet at the same time it speaks to the feeling and the interest of Ozu’s films, to which it adds an enrobing layer of separation: Ozu’s own passing from the earth in 1963, hours shy of his sixtieth birthday. Kiarostami was twenty-three at the time.
Perhaps the five of Five represents the five decades in which Ozu made his magnificent films. Perhaps the number suggests an age at which humans evidence their wonder at the world that is open to their senses. Perhaps such a young age implies something else besides: that Ozu will always be the teacher and Kiarostami always like a learning child in relation to him. Kiarostami, unlike Ozu, however, is not what one would call a transcendental artist. Yet doesn’t he make a transcendental gesture in this particular film of his? In this film of Ozuvian separation, isn’t the sea that we constantly watch a reminder of Ozu’s (and our own) earthly separation, which is behind him now that he has been reunited with the pure creation and Mother Sea from whence he originated?
The film begins with a blank black screen and the sound of the sea. Opening credits in white letters appear on the black background. The first segment shows the sea at high tide under a cloudy sky; we see and hear its advancing and withdrawing waves. There is no other sound. A piece of driftwood is on the seashore. After a while, each advance of the waves toward the camera seems another attempt by the sea to gather up the piece of driftwood, enfold it and carry it off. For the longest time, however, the sea doesn’t touch, or barely touches, the piece of driftwood. The viewer’s mind perhaps drifts to thoughts of Ozuvian frustrated longing. Eventually the sea makes contact, rolling the piece of driftwood, carrying it forward a little and pushing it back. Eventually the force of the sea’s tidal movement—there continues to be no other sound—breaks off a fragment from the piece of driftwood. The sea continues its attempts to take in the driftwood. After numerous such attempts, the main piece of driftwood is finally taken in. It eventually exits the frame as the sea tries steadily to take in the fragment. Eventually the main piece of driftwood re-enters the frame, only now in the background, at an immense distance from the seashore and the fragment of driftwood that has been deposited there. The fragment is left there, all the sea’s attempts to gather it up, enfold it and carry it off failing. Even the great sea, like imagination, has its limits. We have been privy to a drama within Nature: one of birth, separation, loss. A burst of solemn music follows the fade-out to black—the black with which the film began. We anticipate the next segment.
A railed boardwalk appears in the foreground of the new shot; under a cloudy sky, the sea is behind this. Its waves advance and withdraw, and the sound is muted by comparison with the sound in the first segment. People walk—a few jog—across the boardwalk in either direction; separately, two or three, one accompanied by a small dog, walk down steps or a ramp to the shore. We are able to take in the remarkable variety of humanity by the different gaits and speeds of these pedestrians, although at one exhilarating moment two of the people, each walking in the opposite direction, seem to have the same gait at the same speed. Depending on his or her direction, everyone is either followed by his or her shadow or accompanied by it. Everyone is oblivious to the sea, or appears to be. Perhaps we are witnessing their attempt to suppress thoughts of their mortality; the eternal sea may be throwing these into relief, and people may be doing their best—in some cases, simply by going on with the rest of their lives—to hold these thoughts at bay. Their mortal shadows reinforce this suggestion. One person glances at the camera, reminding us of its presence—if you will, another “shadow.” Indeed, with the railing partially obstructing our view of the sea, the whole image suggests an attempt to hold the forceful sea in check. We want to stay here, not return to our original state. Pigeons trot into the frame on the boardwalk, but shortly they vanish, underscoring the evidence of transience that the comings and goings of the pedestrians on the boardwalk also encapsulate. I repeat: No one stops to look at the sea. (It is the elephant in the room, so to speak.) From opposite directions two couples run into one another and stop to converse in the right side of the frame. Their stillness is juxtaposed with the sea’s tidal movement; only, briefly, one of the four partakes of some movement herself, briefly leaving the frame and returning to view. The two couples eventually part and go along on their way in opposite directions. Thus people move left and right as the sea moves forwards and back within the frame. The boardwalk is now vacant; not even a bird is to be seen. The shot is held to reinforce this sense of vacancy. There is another burst of the solemn music as the fade-out this time proceeds to white, with its intimation of human transience progressing to some even more distant, and final, shore.
The one soul’s glance at the camera reminds us, of course, of Kiarostami’s participation in this seemingly objective and spontaneous “documentary.” But just how did that piece of driftwood really get there in the first segment? Were any of the appearances of those on the boardwalk in the second segment—such as of the two couples who run into each other—arranged by the director? As in Close-up (1990) and A Taste of Cherry* (1997), Kiarostami is once again nudging documentary in the direction of fiction and fiction in the direction of documentary. Five is another film about the creative act; and for Kiarostami, once again, each human life as well as art constitutes a “creative act.”
The third segment seems more distant, more abstract. Out of the white, animals appear on the beach middle-screen, but the distance of the long-shot makes their species indecipherable. They could be birds; they could be people. What ever they are, they occupy, resting, still, a rightward portion of what the camera perspective renders a narrow strip in the lower part of the screen. The largest portion of the screen, across, is occupied by the sea, which seems relatively calm; but this may be an illusion created by the camera distance. Now the image and sound of the sea seem even more muted than they did in the previous segment. Above the sea, again, is the hazy sky, which occupies a larger strip of the frame than the beach below but a smaller one than is filled by the water. The animals are the only dark element in the frame. Were it not for the fact that the image has emerged from the blank whiteness between segment 2 and this new segment, we would not be certain whether the image was thus emerging or whiting out. Shore, sea and sky, then, appear vaguely as horizontal strips of Nature or “reality”—layers of familiar existence or fluid matter. The animals, distinct in their darkness but indistinct as to their species, provides the figure(s) for the triple-decker though converging ground. However, the latter exhibits a consolidation into nothingness.
The image is minutely transforming, although the mild and muted sound of the water remains constant. The distinction between sky and sea is becoming whited out except for a remnant of the motion of the waves. This motion, rendered abstract and impressionistic, appears as a blue shadow or a blue breeze moving across the now narrower strip of sea, now in one direction, now in both directions. Indeed, this blue of the waves in many instances moves out in opposite directions, creating an aching impression of separation—because of the repetition, perpetual separation. The beach also now has a bluish tinge. By now we know what the animals are; they are dogs. We know this when two get up and move screen-leftward, their tails wagging. Eventually their colony as a whole—perhaps there are four or five of them—shifts screen-leftward, resuming a restful position. The whole image, except for the dogs, inches towards utter whiteness in a complex and subtle play of light. In terms of motion, the dogs seem to mediate between the absolutely still beach and the waves of water. Here is Kiarostami’s reflection of Ozuvian calm and acceptance.
The moving bluish waves-within-the-waves become increasingly abstract, like fluctuating chimeras, in an increasingly whited-out image that increasingly suggests a rarefied haze of light—an extinction; death. It is sheer Turneresque-watercolor beauty. The dogs by this time are dark though indistinct; we “see” them as dogs—incidentally, their number seems to have decreased—only because we already know they are dogs. They also now tend toward abstraction. Somehow, they seem to represent us on our journey to death and possibly to whatever, if anything, lies beyond. By the time that the anticipated burst of solemn music arrives, there is a total white-out and the dogs have vanished. With a haunted chill, we realize we never once heard any bark or other peep from them. Kiarostami has designed the sound to include only what he wants us to hear: the muffled sound of the undulating sea. All good filmmakers do this, of course; but we are reminded in this barkless instance of the precise nature of some art and the more careless nature of other art. We are onto the “game” of the film. Those dogs were put into the frame by the hand of Kiarostami—at his command, at least. It is called mise-en-scène.
The fourth segment is hilarious. The sky is cloud-streaked; the sea is a deep blue. The day is moving toward dusk, and the camera is fixed so that we have a closer view of shore activity. Ducks enter the frame, a few of them quacking before doing so, moving along screen-right. Silence replaces the quacks; all that we hear is the sound of the sea and the sound of little duck feet pounding the beach. A couple of ducks veer a bit towards the camera, but all the other ducks—of various kinds and sizes, and in various-sized herds and at differing speeds—continue in a mostly single line screen-right. They do not add up to a great number of ducks. All of a sudden there’s a reversal of direction! With an occasional flapping of wings, a swarm of ducks now stampede screen-left as the last two stragglers among the screen-righters halt in puzzlement before catching the idea. Where did all these ducks come from? The flood of screen-lefters far outnumber the earlier stream of screen-righters. I know that sometimes a duck is a duck, and of course these ducks are ducks; but, like the dogs in the previous segment, they have about them a symbolical air of humanity. Surely they are meant to express Ozu’s great interest in humanity. They also suggest human adaptability, including adaptability to darkening prospects as daylight makes its way to night. The screen fades out to black, this time accompanied by a burst of lively music for a change—Scarlatti, perhaps.
Once again, Nature has been impressed by the Hand of Kiarostami, who manipulated his troop movements with off-screen enticements of food.
The fifth and final segment, the masterpiece among the five, brings the whole film to a wonderfully dark and mysterious fruition. It is night, and there is a storm. But, like the rainshower in Regen (1929), by Joris Ivens and Mannus Frånken, the raw material that Kiarostami has edited together into what appears to be a single event really has been drawn over time from a series of such events. (Therefore, the fifth “take” is not really a take.) Artless Nature is thus drawn into the domain of art.
This last segment appears to be in black and white. We hear the sound of one or more dogs barking. A full moon becomes visible—not in the sky, though; instead, we see its wavering reflection on the surface of the water. Only that, and a faint aura surrounding it, are visible. Now it isn’t just dogs we hear. Frogs, birds, insects; there is a cacophony of animal sounds. The wavering reflected moonlight disappears before reappearing at what at least seems a closer distance. The reflected moon is brighter now. There’s a rumble of thunder as Art continues holding up a mirror to Nature. Occasionally specks of light join the reflected moonlight; at other times, the moonlight vanishes or nearly vanishes from sight. The image grows abstract; the light not only wavers but becomes segmented—an image of separation. Gray surrounds the reflected moon, as though our eyes have adjusted to the darkness—another illusion, of course. Light reflected off of otherwise invisible creatures crosses the moon’s reflection, compounding the image. Thunder-rumble; the reflected moon again disappears and reappears. Cloaked in night, an invisible magician continues holding us spellbound with its show. The chorus of animal noises seems attuned to the reflected moon’s wavering and undulations. Or is it, instead, that the appearances and disappearances of the reflected moon are attuned to the rise and fall of animal noises and the sporadic intrusion of thunder?
Total darkness yields to near darkness as a faint trace of the reflected moon reasserts itself. The reflection vanishes yet again amidst sounds of rainfall and thunder that promises more rainfall.
Lightning; the screen bursts with a thousand flickers of rain. Is this so? Or are we watching simulated lightning? Rain falls and falls in darkness (or does it?), with these sporadic vast illuminations of Nature’s—or Kiarostami’s—abstract and gorgeous canvases. Silence comes in and stays until a dog moans and a loon sings. Now light appears on the water again as invisible creatures renew their noises. The reflected moon seems so close that we feel we can enter into the wavering light. And again it disappears. (As Robert Browning might say: “. . . the old trick!”) The animal cacophony comes in and subsides—like a tide controlled by the moon. The reflected moonlight, at its most intense, reappears to promise us the moon before clouds yet again disfigure and break up the image, or block our view. Now the moon is again clear as other sprays of light seem to augment its fullness. Into a vast cloud the moon again vanishes. Low noises; blank darkness—until the shimmering water gently reappears. There is no doubt: It is Ozu—the inspiration of Yasujiro Ozu.
More and more light, the chirps of birds: dawn—and the storm has passed. We see birds as well as hear them now, flying across the reflected sky. They are Nature’s trains of transience—an image we identify with Ozu.
Ozu has passed away from us and now is everywhere.
As you know, I keep changing by years’ “bests” as I re-see films or, as in the case of Kiarostami’s Five, finally catch up with them. Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is a massively moving achievement and the crown of cinema’s greatest English-language trilogy. But Abbas Kiarostami’s Five Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu is now my choice for 2003’s best film. It is a wonderful use of digital video to meditate on art and life, art and Nature, and Yasujiro Ozu—and all the rest of us that he left behind and graciously inspirits still.
* Please see my pieces on both these films, categorized as “film reviews,” elsewhere on this site.
