(Note: My essay on Kiarostami's earlier, companion film, Certified Copy, may be found here: http://ajournaloffilm.blogspot.com/2012/02/place-spacious-and-strange-abbas.html )
**SPOILERS**
I
recently dipped back into Russian literature - after too a long hiatus - with
Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, a
gripping read that caught at my heart as much as it stimulated my mind, in the
way that only the emotionally vehement and intellectually rigorous Russian
writers seem to be able to do. The novel has clear philosophical and political themes,
but the book centers on human relationships - between parents and children,
between friends, between lovers, between gentry and peasantry - and on the way
those relationships constantly shift and communication fails, especially under
the strain of a generation gap, a gender gap, a class gap. In one scene, a
husband and wife comfort one another in the sudden, careless departure of their
son, a son whom they love so dearly but do not really understand and do not
really commune with on any level:
"'He has gone, left us!' [the father] faltered. 'Gone, because he found it dull here with us. I'm a lonely man now, lonely as this finger,' he repeated again and again, and each time he thrust out his hand with his forefinger pointing away from the rest. Then [his wife] came to his side and pressing her grey head to his grey head, she said: 'It can't be helped, Vasya. A son is an independent person. He's like a falcon that comes when he will and flies off when he lists; but you and I are like the funguses growing in hollow tree: here we sit side by side, not budging an inch.'"
"Lonely
as this finger," connected but always separate from the hand. And even on
a deathbed later on, parents and son are separate; they do not understand one another
no matter how much blood joins them, no matter how much one may yearn for the
other.
The
relationships in this masterful book, speak so truly and poignantly about the
human problem of communication: we long for a connection, we long to understand
and be understood, we long for something real with one another - but we are
always aware of something we are missing, a connection not quite made, a
communication not quite fully received, even in the healthiest of
relationships.
And even
at the meta-level in my reading experience with this book, this moving story, I
was aware, as I always am with Russian literature, that it is a translation. In
an odd word choice that puzzles me, in a strange interchange between characters
where I don't understand a motivation, I am aware, however much I become
invested in the lives and characters of the novel, that I am missing something.
With my inevitable limitations as an English speaker, as an American - as
someone who does not know Russian, who is not Russian - I miss something.
Always. In reading a translated book, I am ever aware of this - and I mourn what
I cannot have - but my interaction with a translated book only brings to the
fore something that is always true, in every communication I send, in every
communication I receive: that we are working with signs and symbols, and we do
not always fully understand what the sign signifies and what the symbol
represents - and that, at an even more basic level, the sign will never be the
thing it signifies. If I have only the sign, I do not have the signified.
Literary critics, the deconstructionists in particular perhaps, have
articulated this problem – the best they can, that is, with the limitations of
words. Communication will always break down, will always be imperfect. And yet, at a practical level, we cannot
remain in a state in which we point out the limitations of every sign and
symbol; however limited, we strive to communicate with one another, to
understand one another, and we hope to make contact; we hope for communion, for
intimacy, and for love.
Abbas
Kiraostami's most recent film, Like
Someone in Love, a companion piece to his 2010 film, Certified Copy, understands our problem and understands our desire: it
understands our strivings for connection in the midst of a world where we
always strain to see, to hear, to understand.
Running
as a stream over, under, and through the film, noises that are a mere
background to the main story constantly distract us and deflect our attention –
they burden our strain to listen and to understand: music, conversations,
traffic sounds. Even inside what should be the quiet of a car or inside the
walls of an apartment, the exterior noises intrude in every moment. And our
vision, too, as much our aural sense, is constantly obstructed and distracted:
we see our characters through a curtain or from a distance and behind objects;
we see them as a likeness in a photo, in a hazy reflection, or through a window
that is reflecting something or someone else.
Layers of other sights and sounds come between us and our object, and we
are aware of the constant decisions we must make in each moment - what do I
listen to? what do I look at? what is most important? how do I interpret this
thing I see and hear only so imperfectly?
The
opening scene of the film beautifully encapsulates the struggle throughout the
film to discern, perceive, and understand. The scene is a humming restaurant,
or a bar, rather - a pleasant place, where the conversation seems friendly and
lively, where the music falls pleasantly on the ear, where groups of people sit
or stand in animated groups - talking, laughing, leaning in and out, making
gestures. And through it all, the sound of one woman's voice rises, slightly
louder than the rest and arrests - or barely arrests - our attention, gradually
drawing our curiosity. The camera stays still for a long time, letting us take
in the whole scene - a wide frame - without giving us hints of whom we should
look at or listen to. Whose voice is it? Is it someone with those standing in
that group in the background on the right? What about in that group of three in
the middle, sitting at the table? Or perhaps the red-headed woman in the
foreground to the right? We strain to match the sound of the voice to one
person's lips. We think, for a moment, we've succeeded, and then, stop and
doubt the match.
But the camera eventually shifts and gives us some direction,
and we see the speaker is a woman on a phone who has been out of sight, just
behind the camera's gaze. And so we do begin to focus on her, to try to listen,
but her words are out-of-context; we hear the words - or read them, rather, since
the film is in Japanese, translated for us, we hope with some accuracy, into English
words that appear on the screen - and we understand the words individually and
in groups, but the clues as to who she is and whom she's speaking to build only
gradually - and we doubt our guesses about this overheard slice of a conversation.
The scene continues in this vein, and we finally understand whom we are to
focus on, but she is often out of sight still, and the camera focuses on the
person she is speaking to or on another group who isn't even aware of her: it
focuses on the group of three at the table; or on the red-headed woman, who
seems to be a friend, maybe a colleague; or on an older man, who seems to know
her well. And still the bar sounds and
activity constantly intrude - we follow people going in and out, listen to and
see the door open and close, sense the constant conversations - and with all of
these distractions, we continue to try to understand who the woman is, who the
red-headed woman is, who the man is and what they all are to each other. The
man, we guess, is a boss - and owner of the bar? - but he seems to treat her in
an almost familial fashion - a father? But, then, that doesn't quite fit; they
don't act like father and daughter - the relationship isn't somehow familiar
enough. The red-headed woman seems to be a friend, clearly listening in on the
phone conversation, even speaking into the phone herself to the caller, but the
two women are not together at the same table; the red-headed woman seems to be
with someone else, someone who is mostly just out of our range of vision.
There's something familial about the relationship between the women, too, but
something there doesn't quite fit that label either.
Who the
women are and who the boss man is becomes clear as the film goes on - we learn
the main woman's name, Akiko - but the
guesses we make about what their words mean in full, about who they are, and
what they are, and how they are related to each other represent the bigger
thread of guesses and imperfect assumptions and interpretations running
throughout the film. We make guesses about the characters of the film; they
make guesses about one another. By the end, who the characters actually are is
clear, but what they mean to each other and how we might define, once and for
all, their relationships eludes both them and us.
But the desire
for a meaningful relationship, for intimacy - for a true connection and defined
roles - is no less urgent, perhaps all the more urgent, as interpretations go
awry and as modes of communication fail: as phone messages go unanswered or a
phone is left to ring, or a phone is disconnected; as a pounding on a door is
ignored; as a specific car horn is subsumed among the other traffic noises; as
a line of print is inadvertently left out of a book; as a request to move a car
is ignored; as a whisper is too quiet, a gesture too obscure. Throughout the failures in communication and
interpretation, we see the urgent desire for relationship and for closeness in
key moments and through key characters - through Akiko’s boyfriend's tracking
of her, and through his decision to marry her so that, as he says, she will be
forced to be with him, so that she will have to answer his questions, so that
she will not lie to him anymore; we see it through an old widowed professor's
invitation to a call-girl - our Akiko, as it turns out - where we soon realize
he does not want the false intimacy of purchased sex but something nearer to
companionship, a shared meal, a conversation over a glass of wine, something
like the intimacy he shared with his deceased wife perhaps.
And
while those moments and characters are certainly most central to the film, they
are highlighted most beautifully, for me, through another scene representing
the longing for relationship and the simultaneous failure of communication -
through some smaller moments relative to our main character, Akiko, and to her
grandmother. As Akiko rides, via taxi, through the city at night for her
meeting with the professor, she listens to her phone messages, ear buds
dangling from her ears; the camera remains on her face - luminous and beautiful
but impassive.
There
are seven messages, most from her grandmother, who has arrived in Tokyo and who
wants to meet with Akiko. The series of messages take us through the grandmother's
day: in the first message, she is riding on the train, nearing Tokyo, looking
forward to seeing Akiko; in the next message, she has arrived, and she tells
Akiko where she is and that she will wait for her - she hopes for a lunch with her granddaughter; in the next,
it is lunch time, and she has resigned herself to lunch without Akiko; in the
next, she describes finding a picture of a woman that looked like Akiko in the
phone booth - she says she knows it couldn't be Akiko, but she calls anyway -
perhaps, somehow, she will make contact this way - but only an ill-pleased man answers;
in the final message, she has returned to the train station - it is nearing the
train's departure time, and she will wait for Akiko under a statue at the
station. The longing for her granddaughter runs throughout each message -
though we understand the grandmother has long lost touch with the real Akiko -
we become more gripped with each message, waiting with each to hear where the
grandmother is, if she's given up, and wondering if there is still time for
Akiko to get to the station.
Akiko's
impassivity - a constant throughout the messages - breaks as she listens to her
grandmother's final words, and she asks the driver if the train station is
nearby. What will she do? We so long for her to run to her patiently waiting
grandmother and to embrace her.
As the
taxi moves past the station, we rejoice at a first glimpse of the statue and
then, straining, we finally spot an aged figure standing underneath it. But as
we move past, other cars obstruct our vision, people walk in front of us, and
the car carrying Akiko doesn't stop; the woman we believe to be Grandmother is
out of sight. Once more around, Akiko asks, and we strain, again, with Akiko,
to see that small, waiting figure, craning our necks, almost, to see around the
obstructions. We see her, but she is soon lost to sight once again, and the
car, carrying Akiko and the chance for a connection, moves on. The gentle tension
and longing of the scene paired as it is with those things blocking the
connection is so beautifully realized, suffused with tenderness, but it also
relentlessly backs away from a fulfillment for that tenderness, backs away from
a possible connection.
What
would have happened if Akiko and her grandmother had met? Was that woman
beneath the statue really Akiko's grandmother? Akiko clearly believed her to
be, and perhaps that emotional reality is what mattered most as the taxi passed
the station. For Akiko, the woman was her grandmother, not just like her, and
she decided to reject the connection with her.
Likenesses
and surrogates run through the film - Akiko is mistaken for a granddaughter,
the professor is mistaken for Akiko's grandfather, and these mistakes are not
corrected. And Akiko tells a story about
when she believed, as a young girl, that a famous painting was a portrait of
herself - and she still half believes it is though she knows it isn't she. She
lifts her hair into a bun, imitating the woman of the portrait and showing just
how similar she is to the painted woman.
Likenesses,
surrogates, translations - they are not the originals, but perhaps the
translation is all we have. Even the
most astute translator of words and of people - the professor, who is both a
translator and sociologist, with his house full of well-thumbed books and a
mind full of research - cannot find a way to communicate with perfect precision
with those around him. His ability to perceive, like anyone's, is flawed and
his ability to communicate is flawed. His manuscript suffers an imperfect
printing; he cannot express what he really wants from Akiko; he falls asleep
when he should be paying attention; he repeats only a portion of a conversation
when he is asked for the whole; he backs out of his driveway, blind, nearly
hitting a woman and her children; he wants to protect Akiko but wanders from
window to window when she is threatened, unable to get a clear view and unsure of how to
act.
But for
all his flawed communications and failed connections and even with Akiko's own
failed connection with her grandmother, the professor and Akiko find in one
another, something like a familial relationship that feels true. He says, at
one point, almost playfully but also seriously, he will act as grandfather to
her, and later, when she needs a grandfather, she calls him. We are aware of a
kind of emotional reality between them, however tenuous and shifting the relationship.
And the
film's final scene offers another kind of emotional reality as it brings about a
sort of violent end to the film’s train of constantly obstructed communications
– obstructed communications between film and viewer, between film character and
film character. A stone is thrown - it's sudden, elemental, violent; it is a barbaric
communication, but it forms, for us, almost a relief: a concrete something that
transmits one, clear, specific thing, emotional frustration and anger; there is
no questioning its message. The stone
shatters a glass window – glass like the glassy surfaces we see throughout the
film - glass that hides something by a reflective surface and simultaneously
allows a view to something; glass that has kept out noise and let noise seep
in; glass that has reflected people and distorted people.
The
glass that has half blocked and half allowed sounds and sights shatters almost
joyously, if terrifyingly, removing, if only for a moment, the questions about
what a symbol means and the questions about what one person is to another. “Talk to me,” this moment screams; "I need to
know you hear me, not through a phone, not through an intercom, not through a
car window, not through a glass darkly, but directly."
Because
the moment is so sudden and violent, we understand it cannot maintain itself
and it will not bring about trusting intimacy. But we do understand it in itself ;
we understand the rage and the desire that brought it about. And it does feel
like a relief, as thwarted as we have been throughout the film, so distracted
by other things, voices, sounds, sights, that we have yearned for focus and one
specific moment of clarity, for a specific moment of truthful contact.
And with
that we leave the film’s world. And whether we leave hopeful or in despair will
perhaps depend on our own hope for true contact in a world of signs and
symbols, likenesses and translations.
