Customer Reviews

Where Is the Friend's Home? [VHS]

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4 star:		(1)
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An 8 year old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished with expulsion from school -- hardly what in Hollywood parlance is called "high concept."

This is a simple, unassuming film, but not a simplistic one. It may at first appear excruciatingly slow and bland to our western eye; even the colors have the muted tones of the earth. We may wonder why the people depicted in it talk in that monotonous drone, why they seem to be repeating the same things; but if we set aside our prejudices and allow ourselves to peek into the universe Kiarostami presents to us, we find it is a fascinating one.

Kiarostami shows us a world frozen in time; there is not a single car in the entire film, not a single traffic light, not a single billboard, not a single highway or even a paved road. The women laboriously wash clothes by hand, all day long, squatting on the floor, pumping water from a well. The children do their homework on the floor, meals are served on the floor. It is a world in which every gesture, every word, every exchange of looks acquire a far different meaning than they would in our fast-paced, modern world.

The only references to the present, are a large farming machine which stands incongruously outside of the school, and a transistor radio the father fiddles with near the end of the film, extracting senseless sounds. These objects do not just happen to be there. A film-maker with Kiarostami's obvious talent does nothing gratuitously. Through them, I think, he imparts a powerful message very subtly. The modern farm machine left unused stands for progress stopped, when the Islamic Revolution yanked the country several centuries backward, and the radio emitting senseless sounds, the disconnection with the outside world. This shows a great deal of courage on Kiarostami's part if we consider that in a country where even subtle religious or political criticism can result in censorship and harsh punishment to the film-maker.

The setting is simple enough: two small villages in northern Iran, separated by a small hill and linked by a narrow walk path. The people depicted in the film are the inhabitants of these villages. This is a minimalist production at best. Don't look for expensive sets or special effects, or overpriced and overrated actors parroting their lines. There are no digitized people walking on the deck of ships, no super-stereophonic-surround-sound blasting your eardrums, no creatures from outer space, and no car chases.

There is a mule chase, which is fairly well done; but whereas in Hollywood this sort of thing is meant to provide cheap thrills, here it is meant to show a boy's vivid intelligence at work.

This could almost pass for a student film, were it not so carefully crafted, and were not every element in it placed skillfully for a purpose. The style is unobtrusive and is in perfect harmony with the story. What results explodes beyond what is immediately apparent, imparting the film with pathos and poetry. A boy looking for a friend's home, may not on the face of it appear to be of much interest, and on the surface not much appears to happen, but in fact a great deal is happening; a boy's incursion into the meandering alleys of an unknown village, takes on the scale of an odyssey. But more importantly, it is a complex and subtle film that can be read on many levels.

It is about the innocence of a child, with his intelligence and curiosity yet untouched and uncorrupted by the adults surrounding him -- who thwart his every attempt to achieve his goal: the mother hardened by a life of drudgery; the mean grandfather who sends the boy to look for a pack of cigarettes he knows full well to be in his pocket; the fast-talker who rips a page from the boy's precious notebook, without concern for his objections, without thanks and who do not bother to answer the question the boy asks him.

It is a film about persistence, loyalty, friendship and personal initiative, which succeed in the end in saving the boy's friend from expulsion, but which goes unrecognized, and unrewarded. And while we cheer for that wonderful little boy's victory in reaching his objective, and for teaching us a great lesson in humanity, we are also left wondering, sadly, about his fate as he grows up in a stagnant society, and as he is repeatedly exposed to the meanness, indifference, and narrow-mindedness of his elders.

It is a film whose message goes much farther than what is immediately apparent; it leaves a trace in us, it reverberates in us, and changes us in some way, as true works of art do. Kiarostami is indeed a poet of great sensitivity, enormous talent and an artist in the truest sense of the word. In many ways he reminds me of Ermanno Olmi; especially the vintage Olmi of Il Posto and The Fiances.

This film is Kirostami's first in his trilogy, which includes Through the Olive Trees and Life and Nothing More. In a sense, it is his purest and more subtle one, even though his latter films are the ones that established his reputation as a major new talent emerging from post-revolutionary Iran. He recently shared the highest award, the Palme D'Or, at the Cannes Film Festival for The Taste of Cherry. He won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival for Where is the Friend's Home? in 1989.

"Where is the Friend's Home?" (1987) is an engaging, surprisingly dramatic film from Iranian filmmaker and photographer Abbas Kiarostami. It's the first in a trilogy that is followed by "And Life Goes On" (also known as "Life, and Nothing More") and concludes with "Through the Olive Trees" (i.e. "Under the Olive Trees").

The trilogy is about the working people in a rural part of Iran. In the first film, we meet several schoolboys (all played by non-actors). One particularly appealing little fellow goes through hell and high water to get a friend out of a jam. Things work out by the end, but not quite as expected.

In "And Life Goes On" (1991), the director of the previous film (an actor playing Kiarostami) returns to the area in the wake of a terrible earthquake. He wants to find out what happened to the two little boys. It's a compelling idea for a follow-up to "Where is the Friend's Home?," but isn't as emotionally satisfying since it feels more like documentary than drama, although all three films incorporate both.

The final film, "Through the Olive Trees" (1994), takes place as the survivors attempt to put their lives back together. It ends on a hopeful and romantic note.

Of the three, "Where is the Friend's Home?" is my personal favorite, although "Through the Olive Trees" would seem to be the critical favorite. The trilogy, taken as a whole, is an excellent introduction to the work of a master filmmaker and to the cinema of Iran, which just may have more master filmmakers--Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi--per square inch than any other country in the world.

I saw this film in a film festival years ago, the first from Iran I ever saw, and I was hooked. The simple humanity of the story and the surroundings completely touched me. Just my 2 cents worth, since other reviewers tell the story line very well. Would love to see this on DVD.

I believe that the recent movies of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami have been hugely overrated (in the rarefied world of art movie criticism), but this 1987 movie is a genuine gem. A transition between his early didactic shorts and his later full blown (and somewhat pretentious) art movies, this was one of the first Iranian movies to receive some notice in the west, at least in the film festival circuit. It tells a deceptively simple story: a boy has mistakenly taken home another schoolboy's notebook. Fearing the other child will be severely punished at school the following day if he doesn't bring to class the home assignment completed, he decides to go to his house to return the item. The problem is he doesn't known where he exactly lives, so a small odyssey to finds him starts. The boys live in a fascinating mountain village, with very narrow streets, and stone houses. That village was destroyed by an earthquake a few years later, and reportedly the young actors playing the two main characters were killed in it. Kiarostami tells a fictionalized story of a film director searching for the young actors after the earthquake in his 1992's And Life Goes On. Knowing their sad fate makes this film even more moving. And as in many Kiarostami movies, the final scene is a knock out.