Javid, Sareh (2017) The Traveller : A Philosophical Journey through Kiarostami’s Cinema. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32200 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. The Traveller: A Philosophical Journey through Kiarostami’s Cinema Sareh Javid Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2017 Department of History of Art/Archaeology School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1 For Abbas Kiarostami (June 22, 1940 – July 4, 2016) 3 Abstract The primary goal of this thesis is to provide a way to look at Kiarostami’s cinema philosophically, or a key to assist in unlocking and unpacking philosophical questions, concepts and themes in his cinema. To this end, I analysed Kiarostami’s cinema through Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the cinema, Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of nothingness and the specific role that Martin Heidegger grants to poets in the destitution time. My main focus in this thesis is on Kiarostami’s first feature film The Traveller (1974), since this film has been widely ignored in the literature. Concentrating on this particular film, I endeavoured to show that almost all the formal and aesthetic features that has been considered as the characteristics of Kiarostami’s cinema was already existed in The Traveller. I attempted to show that The Traveller is essentially a modern film where “nothingness” finds a narrative place and to demonstrate that this film well fits into the Deleuze’s time-image model. I also explicated key elements of Deleuze’s Kafka-inspired notion of “minor cinema” to show that Kiarostami’s cinema is a politically engaged one where politics is not represented but enacted. Another key concept that I utilized in this endeavour is Heidegger’s “disenchantment of modernity” where the need for great poetry is felt more than ever, because I maintain that poetry is the very foundation of all Kiarostami’s films. For this purpose, I first tried to demonstrate that Kiarsotami’s cinema is structurally poetic with the help of the characteristics that Pier Paolo Pasolini considers for the cinema of poetry and Deleuze’s “crystal-image”. Secondly, I endeavoured to illuminate that Kiarostami takes the role that Heidegger grants to poets which is to say to prepare us, “the preserver”, for the “holy”. 4 Throughout this thesis, I endeavoured to fill in the gaps in the theoretical analysis of Kiarostami’s cinema by making connections between concepts and images that may not be apparent, addressing elisions in his films. 5 Acknowledgements I acknowledge the Kamran Djam Scholarships, who awarded me for postgraduate funding for full-time study between 2012 and 2015. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Tania Tribe, for her advice, invaluable guidance, caring support, and inspiration during the work. Without her motivation, immeasurable encouragement and quest for excellence, this work would have never been fruitful. I am grateful to Dr. Isolde Standish and Dr. Shane McCausland, my second and third supervisors, who have been encouraging and supportive throughout my research. I would also like to thank my dear friend Benjamin Pollock and my beloved cousin Leila Rafiee for being wonderful and supportive to me. I wish to express the deepest sense of gratitude to my dearly loved parents Aliasghar and Maliheh. They have sacrificed the most during my studies and I could not have completed my education or this dissertation without their support. I am very grateful to my beloved sisters, Parvin and Parvaneh, for their continuous moral support and being an everlasting source of love and happiness in my life. I thank my brothers, Reza, Hamid, Mohamad.j for being always supportive and encouraging. I am greatly indebted to my partner, Dr. Alireza Rahnama, for his wholehearted support, understanding and for motivating me to peruse my PhD. I would like to acknowledge the self-sacrifice displayed by him throughout the entire duration of my PhD and for standing firm by my side during difficult situations. 6 Contents Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis ................................................................................ 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 4 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1 ...................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 9 Abbas Kiarostami: a Self-taught Director .............................................................. 12 Urbanization during the 1960s ............................................................................... 14 Modern Literature ................................................................................................... 16 Children of Iranian Cinema .................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................... 29 Kiarostami’s The Traveller: a Cinema of Seer ....................................................... 29 The Child Seer in The Traveller ............................................................................. 38 Kiarostami’s Beliefs: In the crisis of “Break in the Link between Man and the World” .................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................... 58 Nothingness: The Ultimate Power that Qassem Encounters .................................. 58 Modern Melodrama ................................................................................................ 65 The Traveller: a Modern Film with Modern Narrative Structure .......................... 67 Narration ................................................................................................................. 71 Chance .................................................................................................................... 76 Sartre’s Nothingness ............................................................................................... 78 Man Is a Useless Passion ....................................................................................... 81 Kiarostami’s The Traveller and Truffaut’s 400 Blows ........................................... 85 Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................... 91 Towards A New Political Image: Kiarostami’s Close-Up ......................................... 91 Kiarostami’s Cinema: Apolitical? .......................................................................... 94 Kiarostami’s Cinema: Political? ........................................................................... 104 The Face Is a Politics ............................................................................................ 112 Chapter 5 .................................................................................................................. 120 The Poetics of Kiarostami’s Cinema .................................................................... 120 Elena and Sheibani on the Poetics of Kiarostami’s Cinema: a Brief Review ...... 128 Pasolini on Poetic Cinema .................................................................................... 132 …“The grandeur of my finger”… ........................................................................ 141 7 …“Iron girders and quicklime”… ........................................................................ 160 Chapter 6 .................................................................................................................. 195 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 195 Filmography ............................................................................................................. 199 Other Credits: ....................................................................................................... 206 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 210 8 Chapter 1 Introduction This thesis offers a philosophical reading of Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema identifying which philosophical positions, themes and questions are being revealed through his films, and providing a lens through which one could read a film in relation to philosophy. This study