Review of Shirin (2009) by Zoran S — 26 Nov 2009

This is likely to try the patience of most Americans and doesn't have much of a chance of being widely seen. However, I found it to be such a formally compelling and emotionally rich viewing experience.

Kiarostami takes the minimalistic visual approach to following the lives of women he presented in "Ten" (2002) even farther. "Shirin" consists entirely of close-ups of women watching an adaptation of "Shirin" that we only hear on the soundtrack. Of course, a close look and listen to the sound/image indicates the women aren't actually watching anything. The making of documentary included on the dvd confirms this: Kiarostami merely filmed women looking at the camera and a cardboard diagram, often directing how they should move their eyes. Strangely, this level of.

Artifice that Kiarostami brings to the film makes the close-ups of the crying women even more powerful. The film they are "watching" exists only in their imagination as it does in ours. It's the ultimate experiment in off-screen space and one of the few films I've seen (since Ingmar Bergman's classic period in the 1960s) to treat the face of women with sublime visual dignity.