I would doze off too. Films like these are awfully experimental, even self indulgent. I’m all for avant garde but for the love of Mike, give me something to think about. What’s the point in making such a film?

Posted by Soumya Banerji on Fri, May 11, 2007 at 9:20:00

A vignette ... a snapshot of life..is sometimes a beautiful thing to enjoy… letting us take the time to “stand and stare"… but I agree with Soumya: 5 shots of 15 minutes each - that’s a bit much, I say!

Posted by Sanjeev Naik on Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:50:35

give me something to think about. What’s the point in making such a film?

Soumya: That’s an interesting question. Have you thought about it some?

Sanjeev: Fifteen minutes is the time between the bus you missed and the next one you have to wait for; the duration of a bath; Bohemian Rhapsody followed by Stairway to Heaven; the average run time of a Mack Sennett film; and only one-sixth of a football match! Surely that’s not so long?

Posted by Space Bar on Sat, May 12, 2007 at 7:39:57

All great art is created solely for the artist’s pleasure - she alone decides what she will narrate and how she will narrate. Understanding the setting of the art, its characters, its motivation is again solely, the peculiar problem of the viewer. So, yes, if he wants to make fifty fifteen-minute shots that is fine by me.

However, Kiarostami deserves two gentle wake-up nudges for his comments. First nudge for “..escape from narration..” comment - a real artist should never ever feel this obligation. Second nudge for associating painting and poetry to a form of art that need not narrate anything. The golden glide of a pale moth in Van Gogh’s ‘The Prisoners’ Round’, his spectacularly sinister black blotches of crows, the violent convolutions of his violet Cypresses - if this is not narration at its highest level a la Shakespeare or Nabokov, what is?

Posted by preeti on Sat, May 12, 2007 at 8:11:13

I can’t comment till I see the film myself but I generally find such films tiresome and self-indulgent. I agree with Preeti, of course - the “artist” may do what he pleases.

Posted by Anirudh on Sat, May 12, 2007 at 2:50:31

The MoMA in NY is showing this movie in five installations in five successive dark rooms. It is interesting how the atmosphere and air of expectation changes as you move from the room with driftwood to people to dogs to the final room where you could be excused for thinking that the screen is blank

Posted by Neutral Milk Hotel on Sat, May 12, 2007 at 4:29:16

Preeti: One could approach the statement from another angle - if cinema today wasn’t almost entirely made up of stories that require no effort from the viewer, one way to challenge the dominant trend would be to ‘escape from the obligation of narration’ (which is not the same thing as an escape from narration). Please see this quote on Amitava’s blog: Kiarostami says, “I think a good film is one that has a lasting power, and you start to reconstruct it right after you leave the theater.” (http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2007/05/07/taste-of-cherry)

Anirudh: You know, I used to think Norman McLaren’s films were self-indulgent, though not tiresome; now I’d be happy to be able to watch that kind of a film every once in a while. If Kiarostami is self-indulgent, then it’s sad that viewers are so filled with stern purpose that they can’t watch an occassional film like Five.

Posted by Space Bar on Sat, May 12, 2007 at 5:44:25

I am not sternly purposeful but an hour and fifteen minutes of “nothing”? But I’ll get the film and when in the mood - with me, there is a mood for each film and in extreme cases like this, it assumes great importance - I shall watch it with as open a mind as I can.

Posted by Anirudh on Sun, May 13, 2007 at 8:18:12

Only while cleaning my child’s soft bottom, am I ever sternly purposeful:) Kiarostami can be as self-indulgent as he desires. However, one could still see his movies and concur with Pushkin’s ending of Boris Godunov - narod bezmolvstvuet

Posted by preeti on Mon, May 14, 2007 at 4:43:56

I find it immensely amusing that anyone could consider art to be entirely limited to the whim of the artist.  Through extension, a child’s stick drawings could be the latest genre of post-modern Expressionism and the unedited rants of a self-obsessed teenager could be poetry.  All because they said so.

Art is a consumer’s prerogative, and always must be.  This is not to say that a well-constructed piece like Five is purely based on self-indulgence.  There is a sense of egoism involved, but heck, if those images weren’t so damned beautiful, they would be tedious!

Posted by Sumant on Tue, May 15, 2007 at 4:16:27

Sumant,

Perhaps you missed reading these lines:
“All great art is created solely for the artist’s pleasure - she alone decides what she will narrate and how she will narrate. Understanding the setting of the art, its characters, its motivation is again solely, the peculiar problem of the viewer.”

So yes, for example, novels have been written and become bestsellers. Next thing you know, these ‘writers’ have become artists. Consumers have a choice to reject their output as art and file it where it really belongs: the nearest, made-in-china, paper recyclables plastic can.

But yet, these writers have an inalienable right to call their output ‘ART’. Else we could come perilously close to becoming members of BJP, Bajrang Dal, et all.

Posted by preeti on Wed, May 16, 2007 at 3:31:49

Preeti, I think Sumant wouldn’t argue that anyone has a right to call his output art. But it isn’t then incumbent upon us to also call it art. You have a right to refer to your stick drawings as post-modern expressionism, and we have a right to ridicule it. To try to deny either of those rights is Bajrang Dal territory.

I haven’t seen this film, though I’m looking forward to it. I absolutely loved Ten, though I know many people who found that tiresome as well.

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