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Kiarostami will carry us: A deep look into the establishing shot

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 UNIVERSITÉ DE LORRAINE
INSTITUT EUROPÉEN DE CINÉMA ET D’AUDIOVISUEL
Master 2 Cinéma et Audiovisuel
Option Arts de l’Écran
Cours de Théories du film

KIAROSTAMI WILL CARRY US

A DEEP LOOK INTO THE ESTABLISHING SHOT

Un dossier par
Michael ASMAR

Présenté à M. Laurent JULLIER

Table of contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................3

I- Inside the frame ...................................................................................................4

a) Description........................................................................................................4
b) Decoding........................................................................................................5
c) Analysis ............................................................................................................5

II- Out of the frame ................................................................................................7

a) Interpretation ....................................................................................................7
b) Appreciation ................................................................................................10
c) Experience and usage .....................................................................................11
d) Free association ...........................................................................................13

Conclusion ...............................................................................................................15

References ................................................................................................................16

Table of figures ........................................................................................................17

Introduction

Establishing shots have always been the key to any film, and a powerful tool for directors to hide
some clues and answers. Many believe that the whole film is shown in the first shot, and if it is
true, of course it is not a coincidence at all. Throughout the last century, master filmmakers used
their openings in a very intriguing way that viewers can relate and understand them after watching
the film. Nevertheless, styles, disciplines and approaches differ among different directors.

Abbas Kiarostami, one of the main figures of the new movement of Iranian cinema, offered the
audience some complicated films using very simple techniques and cinematography. His style was
often called “The minimalist cinema of Abbas Kiarostami”. His works always call for
interpretation, as he never leaves his audience with a clear answer or a direct ending. Kiarostami’s
1999 film The Wind Will Carry Us is one of his typical spiritual work where two big disciplines
interfere: narratology and semiology. One affects and completes the other, meaning that
Kiarostami used his simple narratology to express his complicated semiology, his signs and clues.
And oppositely, he used semiology to give a truthful meaning to his story, his narratology.

I chose this film to dive into its establishing shot, which is simple in terms of technique and
narration, but extremely rich in signs and symbols.
 I- Inside the frame

Figure 1: A frame from the establishing shot of Kiarostami’s "The Wind Will Carry Us".

a) Description

At a first sight, the establishing frame of Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us looks an extremely
simple one to describe. A single tree sits on the dry hill dominating the foreground, on which we
can identify a wavy sandy road. On the bottom left frame, we can see a few rocks in a semi-circle
shape. Always on the same hill but on the other side, six badly aligned electricity poles are spotted
below the road. A car is going downhill (right-frame) towards a flat land decorated with a good
amount of trees, leaving a trail of dust coming from its wheels. On this same land, lies several
agriculture fields. Way further in the background and on the right of the composition, hills that are
similar to the one in the foreground in their dryness, besiege the low lands.
 b) Decoding

Technically speaking about this frame, Kiarostami went for a wide shot showing a vast landscape
below the camera with a very wide depth of field. In other words, this is a high-angle shot with the
camera tilting down to a fully net and sharp landscape. No camera movement is involved here, it
is a still shot. Apparently, this has been filmed using a mid-focal range, around 50 mm lens. In
terms of aspect ratio, Kiarostami used the 1.85:1, known as the American widescreen. As for the
shooting equipment, it is important to mention that the The Wind Will Carry Us is one of the first
films to be shot with video, using a digital camera.

Despite being far away from it, the sound comes from the interior of the car, a typical use of off-
screen sound as if the camera is filming the dialogue that is being held totally out of the frame.
Well, theoretically speaking, it is happening right inside the frame but the characters are too far
from the camera, therefore invisible for the audience.

c) Analysis

- “Where’s the tunnel then?”

- “We’ve passed it.”
- “When?”
- “Someone’s been sleeping!”
- “Where is it?”
- “We’ve passed it, back near Biston.”
- “We’re heading nowhere. Read the address so see where it is.”
- “How many times do I have to read it? After the junction, we take a winding road. This is the
winding road. We’re on it. After this road, we head downhill…”

This is the exact dialogue that takes place throughout the whole first shot. An audible conversation
between three indistinct men, sitting inside the car going downhill. The first and the last few frames
are empty, just a landscape composition with no movement or any sign of life in it. The shot begins
and ends empty, and with no camera movement, we can affirm that the first and the last frame are
exactly the same. Seconds later the car appears on the left, going on the straight road heading to a
180 degree corner, leaving a trail of dust behind. As it seems, the men are heading towards the low
land, the agriculture fields, where the mood looks a little bit more lively and greenish. With no
change of direction compared to the viewer, the car is always going right-frame, except at the very
end of the shot where it steers to the left just before the cut. And the fact that the car changes its
direction at the end, could be a clear foreshadowing from the director.

Looking back at the dialogue happening in the first frame, the viewer is able to understand that
these men might have had the tunnel as a reference, but one of the characters missed it while
sleeping. After waking up, he seems to be lost and uncertain of their location nor their direction:
“We’re heading nowhere”. The other person responds by confirming that this is the winding road
and they are already on it.

However, this analysis leaves us with a number of questions regarding what would each single
element inside the frame could refer to. That is where analysis leaves its place to interpretation.
 II- Out of the frame

a) Interpretation

Seeing the opening shot of The Wind Will Carry Us for the first time, might be very normal for the
receiver. A simple landscape shot, a carload going downhill and a group of men having a
conversation about the road they should be taking. Do those elements, really call for interpretation?
If yes what do they mean? Well, seeing it maybe three times or more and diving deeper into the
details of the shot can offer us a box full of questions. Is there a meaningful explanation behind
the fact that the opening and the last frames are empty and exactly the same? Or behind this
winding road? Why does the dialogue happen off-screen? Why is the composition divided into
three main parts: a dry foreground, a rich mid ground and then a dry background again? Based on
the hermeneutic circle, understanding the parts comes from understanding the whole, and
understanding the whole comes from understanding the parts. The elements included in this frame
are the parts, such as the hills, the car, the winding road, the dust, trees in the background… On
the opposite side, the whole is beyond the film itself. The whole represents Kiarostami himself,
his biography, filmography, themes, genres, style… Going from the inside to the outside of this
frame, and that means way beyond the opening shot and even the concerned film, will allow
interprets to find potential real meanings behind each element separately and the shot as a whole.

Some elements require the revision of the complete text which is in this case, the film itself. One
of the first things to attract the eye of the viewer is the long winding road leading to the trees, to
life. Most probably, it refers to the unstable journey that the main character is going to undertake
throughout the movie. As if the director is saying from the very beginning of his film that whatever
these guys are coming for, they are not going to get it easily. They must take this hard road before
getting to their goal. In addition to this, we can relate the dialogue to this idea, especially when the
main character says “We’re heading nowhere”. And in fact, they really are heading nowhere as
they will struggle to get what they wanted at the first place.

When the three characters finally arrive to their destination, a remote village in Iranian Kurdistan,
locals were talking about them, wondering about the real purpose behind their visit. They first
thought that the three engineers were after a hidden treasure. Even at the end of the film, locals
were still lost and unsure of the real reason behind the visit. In other words, as the story goes
forward, the visitors were knowingly leaving a certain mark behind them, the same trail of dust
that was left behind their car in the opening shot. The unknown and unclear purpose of the main
character could have been simply represented that way.

Now comes the part where looking at the film as a whole could lead the interpretation to a
meaningful result. The films is death-themed. It evokes the story of three men who arrives to this
village on an unclear mission. As seen before, in the opening shot the car was on a dead road, no
vegetation, no trees and no real sign of life. When the story goes forward, it becomes obvious that
they are waiting the death of an old woman. At some point, the main character hears that the old
woman is getting better, which means that their mission is failing and they were heading nowhere;
“We’re heading nowhere”. Throughout the whole film, the main character was not getting the
answers he was looking for. As if he kept going the same way, the same direction, with no real
result; in the opening shot the car was always going to the right with no change of orientation. At
the very end, the plot finally takes a major twist; the car finally changes its direction. The film ends
with the death of the old woman, same as the first shot which ends with the disappearance of the
car after taking the final corner, offering us a few frames of emptiness, of death.

Figure 2: The similarity and the emptiness in the first and last frames of the opening shot.

Going further and diving deeper into the reason behind these empty frames, I knew I had to search
for the bigger picture. In his works, the themes of life and death play a major role and The Wind
Will Carry Us is no exception. In the film, a woman gives birth and another one dies. This binary
system is inevitable for every single creature. Everything that follows death is emptiness and
everything that precedes life is also emptiness, therefore death.
 Figure 3: Cirlce of life as represented in Kiarostami's works.

However, the theme of birth and death might be represented through other elements too. The
composition, as previously indicated, is divided into 3 main layers: foreground, middle ground and
background. Each layer has his own characteristics, but looking at the picture at once, it is clear
that they are somehow all connected. In the foreground, the hill with no sign of life or vegetation
has a road towards the agriculture fields where the green color is dominant and then in the
background, comes again empty and dead hills. This is how Kiarostami represented the simple
journey of life using the composition and depth staging in his opening shot.

When asked about the extreme use of off-screen sounds and voices in The Wind Will Carry Us,
Kiarostami explained his point of view using dimensions. “I think it has to do with the architecture
of space and the dimensions. There are six ways: up, down, back, fore, right and left. There are
six dimensions, and when we’re watching a film, we are looking at one of these dimensions. Using
off-screen sound is a witness to remind us that we are only looking at one of the dimensions and
we can also bring in a reminder of the presence of other dimensions while using it. There are
images that we might not be able to create on screen, but using the off-screen sound will remind
and help us to create them.”1 Kiarostami’s use of sound in his films is unique, he offers his
audience a new image only by hearing. Many characters in the film are unseen, only heard. For
him, sound is able to offer missing dimensions, which the image cannot bring up to the screen. On
the other hand, there is a deeper interpretation to it which someone told Kiarostami about. The

1
Excerpt from an interview with director Abbas Kiarostami from Cohen Film Collection’s 2014 DVD release of
The Wind Will Carry Us.
interpret sees the off-screen sounds as a witness to death, meaning that even if we do not see, if
we close our eyes, there are still things going on and there are certainly images we cannot see. The
world does not stop, it goes on and on.

His background as a documentary filmmaker, affected his approach to fiction. As a consequence,

his compositions explore rural Iranian spaces in a very simple and minimalist way. The car also
helps and offers the characters point of view, and so we view Iran exactly as them. Accordingly,
cars are a central element in Iranian cinema. More precisely, they could be identified as separate
characters. A car is a closed space where characters have deep conversations, reflecting about their
thoughts and personalities. It is also a moving space, a tool for exploration and discovery. In his
filmography, Kiarostami used cars as one of the main elements such as in The Report (1977), Taste
of Cherry (1997), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Ten (2002) and Certified Copy (2010).

b) Appreciation

Using a very simple color palette and a straight degradation of beige, Kiarostami was able to take
advantage of rural Iran’s mood to create a very balanced and eye-pleasing shot.

Figure 4: Color palette used in the first shot, generated on canva.com.

In term of composition, I tried to separate the three main layers and represent them as triangles.
The foreground (1) is a dead hill, the middle ground (2) are the lands where life exists and the
background (3) are the dead hills again. They all meet together and have borders witch each other,
which backs up the interpretation of the circle of life represented in figure 3.

Figure 5: Composition divided to three main triangle.

c) Experience and usage

Considered as one of the most influential filmmakers of his time, Kiarostami’s works are an
interesting material for education and film philosophy. Nowadays, rare are those who take his
filmography as an example. However, there are few youtubers out there, trying to introduce Abbas
Kiarostami to a larger audience, considering that his critically acclaimed films are not widely
targeted.
“What is Abbas Kiarostami? Explain Abbas Kiarostami, Define Abbas Kiarostami”2, is a YouTube
video title, taking Abbas Kiarostami as a huge artist, not only as a filmmaker. At some point, it
talks about the use of sound in Kiarostami’s film such as in the opening shot of The Wind Will
Carry Us.

Graham Bollard, another youtuber explains in his video essay, what he calls “The minimalist
cinema of Abbas Kiarostami”, the philosophy behind his artistic approaches in different works. He
also uses a good amount of footages from Kiarostami’s wide filmography.

Lastly, the bigger user of his works is Kiarostami himself. In fact, he doesn’t hesitate to repeat his
aesthetic ways of filmmaking, especially when filming cars in landscapes, characters and even
objects moving through different spaces and levels. In his video essay, Graham Bollard shows how
these repetitions are always bringing up new dimensions in his films: “The repetition of shots
throughout his work, like the close up within a vehicle and character moving through the
landscape, becomes so familiar yet fresh in each new context that we, the audience, are forced to
view it in different ways that take on different meanings.”3

This repetition always includes the idea of a road, a path that a character or an object is taking. A
journey from point A to point B. Below, a few shots from Kiarostami’s films show the similarity
between them.

2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM4rJ22W2_I
3
The Minimalist Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami (Video Essay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBIufcuFvE
 Figure 6: Repetition of shots throughout Kiarostami's works.

On the other side, far away from education and inspirations, Kiarostami’s footages of rural Iran
and its lifestyle in different areas could be or could have been used to take a look at the nature and
the ambiance of this country. Using his rushes of Iranian landscapes and rural lifestyles, a
documentary could be made showing the variety and the richness in this vast piece of land.
Through his images, a foreigner is able to see Iran through Kiarostami’s lens, and imagine the
environment of these locations for a better watching experience.

d) Free association

There is no doubt that Kiarostami’s style of directing forces many interpretations and therefore
free associations to his ideas. While re-watching The Wind Will Carry Us, there were two shots
that reminded me of the first one. I noticed that the winding road located on the dry hill at the
beginning, has had its own evolution in the film. At a first stage, the surroundings of the road are
no longer empty, crops fill the place with their shiny yellow tint, and the shot is closer to the
characters where we can see them clearly on a motorcycle. Then finally, in the closing shot there
is a blue river surrounded by high green grass, and instead of having a human being taking a road,
it is a floating human bone that is crossing the river. A clear mixture between life (water, river…)
and death (humane bone) at the very end, which could mean that the death is just the beginning of
a new eternal life.

Figure 7: Potential evolution of the opening shot.

Conclusion

In the case of moving images, interpretation is harder and larger than ever. Audiovisual works
combine several factors that each demands its own share of attention.

In order to get the real answer behind this establishing shot, we should ask its creator Abbas
Kiarostami. However, there is no right or wrong interpretation, even Kiarostami himself could
have found other interpretations more reasonable than his original intention. That is why art
depends on everyone, not only on the concerned author or artist. It is a shared experience and an
invitation to embark on a deep personal journey.
References

Reviews:

The Guardian – The Wind Will Carry Us by Xan Brooks, September 22, 2000
(https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,,371441,00.h
tml)

The New York Times – 'The Wind Will Carry Us': Finding the Beauty of Life in a Rural
Corner of Iran by A. O. Scott, July 28, 2000
(https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/072800wind-film-review.html)

IndieWire – All Hail Kiarostami! “The Wind Will Carry Us” by Mark Peranson, July 28,
2000 (https://www.indiewire.com/2000/07/review-all-hail-kiarostami-the-wind-will-carry-us-
81507/)

Videos:

Bonus Feature Excerpt from THE WIND WILL CARRY US by Cohen Film Collection,
November 13, 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MpG_PIq9es)

The Minimalist Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami (Video Essay) by Graham Bollard, May 31,
2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBIufcuFvE)

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) Opening Sequence by Trinankur Banerjee, July 6, 2016
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rquhd3CVikU&t=26s)

What is Abbas Kiarostami?, Explain Abbas Kiarostami, Define Abbas Kiarostami by

Audioversity, March 29, 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM4rJ22W2_I)
 Table of figures

Figure 1: A frame from the establishing shot of Kiarostami’s "The Wind Will Carry Us". .......... 4

Figure 2: The similarity and the emptiness in the first and last frames of the opening shot. ......... 8

Figure 3: Cirlce of life as represented in Kiarostami's works. ........................................................ 9

Figure 4: Color palette used in the first shot, generated on canva.com. ....................................... 10

Figure 5: Composition divided to three main triangle. ................................................................. 11

Figure 6: Repetition of shots throughout Kiarostami's works. ..................................................... 13

Figure 7: Potential evolution of the opening shot. ........................................................................ 14

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