Unseen Voices in The Wind Will Carry Us Kenta McGrath

Fig. 3: The view from the car.

to reveal the crew, their visual absence becoming all the more pronounced because of their proximity. The sound continues as it has, divorced from the image. The crew stop and ask a woman for directions. Looking up to face the camera, which has assumed briefly the role of a collective point-of-view of the men, she obliges (Fig. 4).

If one pays attention to the images in isolation, it is easy to notice that the sequence has followed a fairly conventional trajectory for a dramatic film opening, with the emphasis shifting from setting to character, and from wider to closer shots, as the narrative develops and characters are introduced. Other mise-en-scène elements are advanced accordingly:

Fig. 4: A woman gives directions.

the colour of the scenery evolves from red to green, the relative stillness of the earlier long shots progresses to the lateral tracking movements from inside the car, and the trees dotting the landscape are replaced by human figures dotting the fields. As the crew stop again to discuss directions, a boy (Farzad Sohrabi) approaches the car, asking, “Hello, why are you late?” He catches the distracted men unaware, but not the camera, which no longer represents their perspective. This shot also follows its own internal, dramatic trajectory. The boy is framed initially in wide shot on the edge of frame, sitting on a mound. As he gets up and walks forward, the lens pulls focus, and he settles into a close-up a few feet from the car (Fig. 5).

Finally, a human face, with all the clarity of a close-up, isolated in sharp focus! But why this face and not the faces of the men whose banter we have been privy to for the last four minutes, and who seem to be the protagonists of this film? By refraining from turning the camera around, Kiarostami creates another paradoxical effect: the close-up simultaneously emphasizes what is shown (its conventional function) and, because of its position at the end of a chain of images that raises certain narrative and formal expectations (that the protagonists will finally be revealed), emphasizes what is not shown. The closer we get, the more we are made aware of the absence. At first we simply could not see the crew; now it is clear that they are being withheld from us. It is precisely their hiddenness that is emphasized: the crew remain unseen but we know they are there, just as Kiarostami and his crew are there.

This reflexive approach is consistent with Kiarostami’s broader use of narrative and visual omission in this film and others. As we will learn later, with the exception of Behzad (Behzad Dourani), the protagonist, we never see the other crew members, although we hear them frequently. A character that Behzad chats to at various points in the film is a labourer digging a hole on a hilltop, whom we also hear but do not see. Similarly, we never glimpse the old woman whose impending death is the reason for the crew’s visit (they intend to record the subsequent mourning rituals). Elsewhere, dialogue scenes are filmed so that a character is partially obscured by lighting or framing, or else left entirely offscreen, to be imagined by the viewer.

Fig. 5: The first close-up.

Writing about Kiarostami’s earlier films, Gilberto Perez argues that the director’s celebrated realism is one that “declares its artifice, vividly depicting a reality but not allowing us to forget that we’re watching a film, which a film-maker has put together in this way . . . a representation of life and a reflection on how life is represented on the screen” (18). The Wind Will Carry Us is also a vivid representation of life, in all its grandness and smallness, its mysteries and banalities. But it is also a profound reflection on how this life is represented, and it begins with the opening frames of the film. Come in from the city, meet the locals, film them, and leave when the job is done – this is what the TV crew hope to do, and what Kiarostami did for much of his career. Embedded in and around the narrative of The Wind Will Carry Us is an oblique, parallel commentary of the film’s own making, and a reflection of Kiarostami’s own role and responsibilities as a filmmaker, as one who comes and leaves.

Works Cited

Perez, Gilberto. “Where is the director?” Sight & Sound, Vol. 15, no. 5, 2005, pp. 18-22. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Fill in the Blanks.” Chicago

Reader, 29 May 1998, www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2016/07/fill-in-the-blanks. Accessed 15 July 2016. Saeed-Vafa, Mehrnaz, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Abbas

Kiarostami. University of Illinois Press, 2003. The Wind Will Carry Us. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, MK2 Productions, 1999.

TheFilmExperience:AnIntroduction

Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White 2015, 4th edition Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's 544 pp., 978-1457663543 (p.b.), CAD$106.99.

Review by Joakim Ake Nilsson Kwantlen Polytechnic University

An instructor is faced with several challenges when teaching an introductory film course in the twenty-first century. Most students will come to the class having experienced a variety of narrative films, but will need to acquire the detailed technical vocabulary and develop the analytical skills required to engage critically with a film. Furthermore, apart from the proliferation of social media and the popularity of video games that have made films less popular and influential, students today have a variety of platforms to access a broad range of mainstream, independent, and international films. This means that beyond the latest Star Wars film or popular Disney animation, students will likely share a limited number of commonly watched films an instructor can refer to when providing examples. The instructor’s goal then is to choose films – classics? foreign? popular? documentary? experimental? – that teach students to critically engage with films, not only by building their skills in analyzing the themes and issues addressed in films, but also by presenting terminology and concepts that will give them the means to discuss and write about how the formal and narrative elements of film communicate those themes and issues.

In The Film Experience: An Introduction (4th edition), Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White eschew the “Great Films and Directors” approach, and instead make the pedagogical choice to emphasize the role of the spectator/student in the film experience. As they explain in the Introduction, While certain approaches in film studies look first at a film’s formal construction or at the historical background of its production, The Film

Experience begins with an emphasis on movie spectators and how individuals respond to films. Our different viewing experiences determine how we understand the movies, and, ultimately, how we think about a particular movie—why it excites or disappoints us. (9)

While Corrigan and White do well to value audience response to films, they quickly emphasize the importance of spectators being “active viewers” (9). Although film is obviously the subject matter in an introductory course on film studies, it also teaches broader academic skills, particularly critical thinking and effective writing, and connects to educational and social concerns beyond the film studies classroom. The authors feel that students should move beyond subjective responses, reminding them that to

think seriously about film and to study it carefully is therefore to take charge of one of the most influential forces in our lives. Expanding our knowledge of the cinema—from its formal grammar to its genres to its historical movements—connects our everyday knowledge to the wider sociocultural patterns and questions that shape our lives. (17)

Corrigan and White provide a text that takes a very broad approach to introduce students to the many facets that make up film studies. The chapters are well-organized, and most follow the same structure, which makes the text more user friendly for students. For example, Chapter Three, titled “Cinematography: Framing What We See,” begins with “A Short History of Cinematography” and then discusses “Elements of Cinematography” and then concludes with “Making Sense of Cinematography.” In this last section, students are asked to think about the expressive effects of framing and camera distance, moving from identifying and describing formal elements of cinematography to “defining our relationship to the cinematic image” (122). This struc-

ture, as seen in all chapters, reflects the authors’ emphasis on critical thinking, and how the student should progress from identifying formal elements to discussing how those formal elements work in the film to communicate specific ideas to, and evoke certain feelings in, the audience.

In each chapter, the authors provide a large number of brief references to films, each accompanied by a single frame image. These images are drawn from films from a variety of time periods and countries, and provide a broad array of examples that students and instructors can explore in more detail. However, as most of the film references given in the text are very brief, they may not have much meaning to students if they have not seen the film; without the ability to connect the example to the concept being discussed, students may not be able to “see” the concept in action. This approach stands in contrast to a much shorter and less visual text like Ed Sikov’s Film Studies: An Introduction (2009); Sikov instead provides more generic, hypothetical, though more concretely-detailed examples to explain formal and narrative elements. Corrigan and White also provide a few additional detailed examples in the “Form in Action” and “Film in Focus” sections in each chapter, which offer lengthier discussions of films, as well as a link to the LaunchPad Solo website. This is a very valuable resource where students can view over sixty montages and film clips and instructors can find instructional resources, and select and embed videos clips for lectures and assignments. Website access is free for instructors, and can be bundled with the textbook for no additional cost, giving students a six-month subscription to the website.

Another valuable feature of the text is that each chapter begins with “Key Objectives,” a point-form list of the main ideas to be covered, and ends with a “Concepts at Work” section. Many introductory film textbooks end each chapter with a detailed summary of the main ideas and concepts presented in the chapter. Consistent with their focus on critical thinking, Corrigan and White have chosen instead to provide a brief summary, and then present questions and activities that ask students to apply the concepts to specific films: at the end of the Chapter Four, “Editing: Relating Images,” they ask students to “Draw a floor plan of Marlowe’s office based on the spatial cues given in The Big Sleep’s editing” (173). This requires students to apply the principles of film editing in an imaginative way, which is far more valuable than simply asking students to memorize and describe different types of editing. What would be useful at the end of each chapter to both students and instructors is an alphabetical works cited list of all referenced films, given the large number of films included in each chapter.

In Part One, “Cultural Contexts: Watching, Studying, and Making Movies,” Corrigan and White discuss the importance of students engaging critically with film. In the Introduction, “Studying Film: Culture and Experience,” they ask students to think more critically about how the viewer’s identity plays a key role in the film experience--how “experiential circumstances” and “experiential histories” (10) shape a viewer’s emotional and/or critical response to a film. In Chapter One, titled “Encountering Film: From Preproduction to Exhibition,” the authors present an overview of the making, marketing, and exhibiting of films, and how culture and technology play a role in the changing ways viewers experience films. Continuing their focus on the role of the viewer in all aspects of film, they begin the chapter by suggesting that students should “think of production and reception as a cycle rather than a oneway process: what goes into making and circulating a film anticipates the moment of viewing, and viewing tastes and habits influence film production and distribution” (20). This overview also provides a valuable context in which students can explore the ex-