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Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami discusses his films and their influences in an interview. Children figure prominently in Kiarostami's films like "Through the Olive Trees."

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I met the great Kiarostami, in town for his Film Society retrospective, at his hotel room across from Lincoln Center. Though he speaks some English, he had with him a translator, the film professor Jamsheed Akrami, who immediately shut the blinds, explaining to me that "sunlight was the enemy of Mr. Kiarostami." I noticed the director was wearing pinkish-tinted shades indoors. A trim man of medium height, wearing a crisp denim shirt and black jeans, he has the kind of civilized handsomeness that grows on you: warm, intelligent eyes and a sympathetic expression. Perhaps because he was used to getting general questions, when my comments addressed specific scenes he reacted with pleased surprise. Either that, or he was being exquisitely polite with me.

AK: It's best to talk only about films we love.

PL: Well, talk about some movies you loved when you were first becoming interested in films.

In my country, my film education started with seeing classic American movies. Then, when I was 15, 16 years old, there was an invasion of the Italian neorealist films. This corresponded to the time when I could independently make decisions about what movies I wanted to see. My perception of the characters in American movies at the time was that they only belonged in movies, they didn't exist in reality. But the kinds of people we were seeing in neorealist films could also be seen around me--family, friends, people I knew in the neighborhood. I realized that movie characters could also be real, that films could talk about life, about ordinary human beings.

Did you also get a chance to see films by Ozu, Dreyer, Bresson? I ask because they have this quality of quiet and spirituality that is sometimes found in your films.

Without a doubt, I think I have been influenced by all of them. But all those filmmakers were influenced and inspired by life, and so have I. If you see a similarity between my films and theirs, it's mostly because we looked at life in the same way.

In Homework you use the word "researches" to explain what you wanted to do. This is the same word that Rossellini used for his historical films, and Godard, too. How much do you think of your films as "researches"?

When I was making Homework, the only thing I was thinking about was my own problem, my kid's problem; I wasn't even thinking about movies at that point. I just had access to some film stock, and I put it together to shoot Homework. To call this movie a "research"--this is not the way you do research, not the right methodology. But if you were to call it "film," then it's not really film, it's more like "research." [Laughs.]

What was your child's problem?

Let me start by saying that this was the most difficult film I ever had to make. My son was having this problem doing his homework, and that's why I decided to go to his school and see about a solution. But while doing that, I ran into so many other kids having similar problems, it was so alarming to just sit there and hear their problems.

Children are so central to your films. Why, do you think?

Partly by accident, because I was invited to start the filmmaking branch of this new foundation called the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. That's how I got involved making movies about children; then gradually I developed an interest of my own.

There's always a danger in making movies about children, of being sentimental or presenting the child as a martyr for adults' sins.

What really helped me in portraying children was that I could see my own two sons growing up right in front of my eyes. Plus the fact that my job was putting me in contact with children, and I developed this understanding that children aren't really sentimental, martyred, or even innocent. They're adults to me. They aren't as formed or as knowledgeable as we are, but their understanding of life is sometimes deeper and healthier than ours.

There's that scene in And Life Goes On when the boy makes a philosophical statement and someone asks how he figured that out. He says, "One half I learned from history class, one half from my grandfather, and one half I figured out by myself" Three halves.

Yeah, this kid was basically adding himself to those two halves.

The father in that film at first seems irritable and impatient--everything his son does annoys him, but he tries to overcome this reflex. I feel this is something that runs all through your movies, this dialectic between frustration and patience.

To me, the real guide on that trip was the kid, not the father, although the father has the steering wheel. In Eastern philosophy, we have this belief that you don't ever set foot in unknown territory without having a guide. The kid here was acting more rationally, and the father was not rational. The kid has accepted the instability and the illogic of the earthquake, and he is just living on: he's thirsty, he's playing with the grasshopper.

The funniest moment is when the man asks another boy "What happened?"-- meaning, on the night of the earthquake --and the kid starts telling about the soccer game that night.

He doesn't talk about the disaster, he talks about what interests him in life.

Getting back to this intriguing balance between irritation and amusement: In Through the Olive Trees, the Young Man is complaining about romantic disappointments, and the Director is listening to this monologue as he drives. Sometimes he seems about to say, "Okay, I get it, enough already," but then he glances over and he seems amused by the Young Man. I think that you as a filmmaker sometimes toy with your audience, by making us go through something irritating--like the repeated incorrect takes in Through the Olive Trees--which also has an amusing side.

I don't quite agree with you that those multiple takes are necessarily repetition. Because each time they're repeated, the audience's reaction is different. By the fourth time, they say, "Oh, enough of this."

I guess what I'm really getting at is a question about your sense of pace. Your movies have these alternations of tension and relaxation, of stillness and conflict. Some scenes seem to go on a long time, and then at other times the drama is very condensed.

That rhythm is based on Nature, Life: you know, day, night, summer, winter. The contrast between those things is what sustains our interest, because even if you love spring, you can't have spring all year long or you'd get bored. I think there is a pace to Nature, and if you adopt the same pace to your films, in the sense that you manipulate it--at some point caress it, at some point be rough with it--that will cause interest.

I wonder if it's also a cultural difference, because American movies are becoming more and more constant action. You'd rarely get a sequence in an American film like the one in Through the Olive Trees where the two old men are philosophizing, since it doesn't "advance the plot," so to speak.

I'm really enjoying this conversation. Because these are the kinds of things that I was always thinking about, but nobody ever brought them up. So I worry that maybe they don't understand. In Through the Olive Trees we were making a movie about making a movie, but there were moments in the film when we weren't "doing" anything. I was even sometimes tempted to put black leader in between the scenes-- because I was constantly hunting for scenes in which there was "nothing happening." That nothingness I wanted to include in my film. Some places in a movie there should be nothing happening, like in Closeup, where somebody kicks a can [in the street]. But I needed that. I needed that "nothing" there.

Do you need it for aesthetic or religious reasons? Or both?

At one point those two intersect. If you bring out the aesthetic aspect, then maybe you'll see a reflection of the religious as well. The points where nothing happens in a movie, those are the points where something is about to bloom. Similar to a plant that has not emerged from the earth yet, but you know there are roots down there and something is happening. It's like when you read a novel: at the end of the chapter there's a blank where you can pause. That's the kind of thing I'm looking to create in my movies. With a novel, you can stop reading and do something else and then get back to it. But you don't have that kind of opportunity in a movie, you have to consciously work for pauses. So when people tell me "Your movie slows down here a little bit," I love that! Because if it doesn't slow down, then I can't lift it again. And that's the problem with American movies: it's all lifting and lifting and lifting.

They used to have more variation. Like Howard Hawks would have these moments where everyone was sitting around--

Or John Ford.

I have an annoying question. In that scene in Through the Olive Trees where the Director has to do multiple takes because the Young Man keeps getting wrong the number of earthquake deaths--he keeps using his own family's deaths instead of supplying the figure in the script--why do they have to go to the start of the take each time? Why couldn't there just be a cutaway, as there is in the same scene when it appears in And Life Goes On?

I wanted to use the kind of footage that usually ends up on the cutting room floor. And all that repetition also allowed me to get in the exchange where the Young Man is murmuring to the woman he loves, between takes. I really like that kind of stuff, when somebody looks into the camera and you think, This guy's not very interesting, and he turns out to be surprisingly interesting. You have two types of material in a movie: the kind that is really strong, and maybe has an element of arrogance going with it--and the stuff that is subtle and not smug at all. The scenes that are less cinematically arrogant, they interest me more. When I edit my movies, I come upon perfectly framed, nice-looking closeups, and I say, "This is too cinematic."

You're an odd combination: a "humanistic" director, because of your neorealist lineage, and a self-reflexive, `formalist" filmmaker who's always playing with the fact that this is a movie it's all artifice. For instance, at the beginning of Through the Olive Trees, the actor turns to the camera, "I am the man who is playing the director of this film." Just saying that creates a level of skepticism.

Or like the scene in And Life Goes On where somebody says he needs some water. And then the script-girl walks into the frame and gives him water! [Laughs.] The reason for that device was that my crew kept coming to me and saying, "This earthquake happened in summertime. But right now the leaves are turning yellow and we're losing the right season" I said, "Hey, we can't reenact that earthquake. We have to make our own earthquake. And our own earthquake is under control; we can monitor and check everything." To quote Godard: life is like a badly made movie. But when we make our movie, we can make corrections. So I choose when to make an earthquake, and maybe an earthquake in the fall is better than one in the summer.

Yes, but you still want everyone to understand that it is a film, while they're watching the film. It's not like Open City, for instance.

That's a film, too.

But Rossellini isn't showing us the microphone boom, or having an actor tell us that he's playing the director.

I agree that you have to be absorbed by the film. But not to the extent that you forget that you're watching a film. Every film is ultimately a reenactment of reality, not that reality itself. I don't like movies to make their audiences react in a very emotional way. That's why, for example, I avoid using music in my movies.

Let's talk about Closeup. It's one of my favorites of your films.

I have a strong feeling about that movie only; my other movies I have no opinions on, but I really like Closeup. It was the kind of movie that didn't allow me as a director to manipulate or control it. I feel more like a viewer of that movie than the maker of it.

I feel that it's a Dostoyevskian movie, in a way. I thought about the "hero," if you want, in terms of Prince Myshkin in The Idiot. He's like a Holy Fool. It's so strange because he's the imposter, but he comes across as much more sincere than the family he tries to deceive, who have this air of bourgeois inauthenticity.

The reason you like that character is because he's an artist. That's why he can make up beautiful lies. And I like his lies better than the truth that the others have, because his lies reflect his inner reality better than the superficial truth that the other characters express. I think it's always the case that through people's lies you can draw closer, you can get a better understanding of them. Do you think it's an autobiographical film?

At some points, yes. I resemble both Sabzian and that family. I have cheated on people and I have been cheated.

Every young would-be artist starts out "impersonating" an artist, right? You have to bluff your way into art.

Because when you're not happy with your real self, then you have to start imagining. That's what's really nice about having the power of imagination: everyone has a share of that power, but only artists can make the best use of it and bring that imagination closer to reality.

Sabzian has this religious feeling about movies. He wants to take the family to see "his" movie together, as though at that moment he's a kind of religious guide. Do you think that film is a religion?

I think so. But it depends on what movie.

The ending of Closeup--

It was so difficult to film that scene, after the trial, when we brought Sabzian back to the family's house. Normally when you shoot in a real house, the most difficult thing is to get the equipment in. But this time the difficulty was getting Sabzian, the character, in the house. Sabzian was just standing outside the door, kind of silent, because he felt that the kind of authority that had helped him get into the house the first time wasn't there any more. So I went up to him and said, "Hey, don't be embarrassed. You didn't even lie to these people. Didn't you tell them you're going to bring your film crew to film them? That's what you did!" [Laughter] So that took care of his problem. He felt better and he went in. But then I had difficulty just thinking about what I had done, what I had told him. I was about to cry. And I paced around the place where they kicked the can, before I could go in. [Pause.]

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What happened in Closeup reminds me of the story of one of our poets. He was like a homeless guy with old, torn clothing. He was just passing by a religious school and he heard some people reciting from the holy book, the Koran, in a beautiful voice. So he stood there listening for awhile, and then he was so fascinated that he banged on the door. They opened the door and he told them he had really enjoyed their recitation. "How did you learn to sing so beautifully?" When they looked at him, they thought this guy's nobody, so they tried to kid him, saying, "It's not a problem, all we did was go over there to that icy pool, we broke the ice and dove in. When we reemerged, we could recite like that." He actually followed what they told them and dove into the water, and when he came out they were worried that he was going to catch a cold or die. As they were drying him off, he said, "Okay, now you can bring me the Holy Book." He started reciting just as beautifully as they had. This is such a wonderful story, and I think something like that happened in this movie, in the sense that everybody got what he wanted.

The ending is one of the most amazing I've ever seen. Usually in "doppelganger" stories there's an ominous, frightening feeling. But here the double embraces his model, Makhmalbaf; he hugs him on the motorbike.

When I was making that scene I praised the person who had invented that motorbike, because it enabled me to have this person hug his idol! As for doubles in general, sometimes your double becomes even more original than the original, because he's more devoted to the idea than the original is.

Like a disciple.

Yes. At one point the real director, Mr Makhmalbaf, came to visit the family, to impress them in Sabzian's behalf, and the mother said to Makhmalbaf when he was leaving the house: "Mr. Makhmalbaf, the other Mr. Makhmalbaf was more Makhmalbaf than you are." [Laughter.] I think the reason is that Sabsian wanted so desperately to be Makhmalbaf, but the real Makhmalbaf doesn't care to be Makhmalbaf any more.

If this movie had been made in America, it would have been about the culture of celebrity and how it empties everybody out.

Which is why I made my movie in Iran. [Laughs.] No, I really don't mean to say that.

I think it's curious that you made a movie about someone who impersonates Makhmalbaf and then you got two different actors to play yourself in two later movies.

I really didn't mean for them to play me, just any film director. Which is why the actor in the pre-title sequence of Through the Olive Trees says, "I'm playing the director" He didn't say, "I'm playing Abbas Kiarostami."

Yes, but he's shooting a film with a sequence that's in And Life Goes On!

But I don't think most audiences will remember that!

Closeup is shot a lot in closeup. I have the impression that in your last few movies you're placing the camera farther away, you're using fewer closeups; there's a different, more complex handling of space.

In Closeup we had two cameras in the courtroom scene. One is just a longshot to follow the proceedings of the court. The other one is our camera, an artistic camera, which is basically focused on Sabzian in closeup. The logic behind those two different shots is that the Law always has to be in a longshot, meaning that you have to look after the interests of everybody. With that camera we can't get close to any individual. But the function of art is to get close to individuals. And through art you can get close to a person and then change the Law. Sometimes you can realize that the frame created for one individual maybe is too tight and you have to extend it. And this is what Sabzian was trying to prove: that he needed a larger, an extended, frame. Every abnormal person would have that kind of a message: even sometimes by causing injury to themselves, they're saying, the Law is too tight a frame for us.

Do you have a preference for longshots, long-duration takes, or closeups?

To me, a closeup doesn't necessarily mean that I'm close to the person. In every movie I made, the implication would be different. In And Life Goes On, the use of longshots made more sense. If I were to use closeups, it would have meant you were dependent on following one person. The Director-character, in that movie, was irrationally obsessed with the closeup of the picture that he had [of the two missing kids who had starred in his last movie], and he was showing the photo to everybody.

The film was really more about a society rebuilding itself, so it's a longshot movie.

And that was what was also implied by the final scene of the film: that we need to look at things in a larger scale. You've now ended two movies, And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees, with these incredible, elaborately planned shot-sequences, what the French call plans-sequence.

When I use a longshot it distances me from my cast and crew, and that affords them an opportunity to submerge themselves into the environment. That's also why I use a telephoto lens and pan with it. It's why I try to avoid tracking shots, because in tracking shots the whole crew stays too close to the actors and makes them selfconscious. It's my experience that when the camera is at a distance from the actors, they feel better, more like themselves, more able to relax into their characters. After the first one or two minutes of a shot-sequence, that's when the performances get interesting.

Then why use only one shot-sequence in a film?

My style is changing. In my future films you'll see more shot-sequences.

This is probably too broad a question, but what has been the effect of the Iranian Revolution on your films?

Actually, in many ways my films were the same before and after the political change. It's unfortunate that critics here haven't seen some of my more important pre-Revolutionary films. They weren't able to travel here because they're banned. Not by the censors--by the Ministry of Education. Sometimes for trivial reasons: in one, for instance, because a woman's hair was showing.

Do you ever feel you have to censor yourself?

Not at all. I normally choose subject matters that jump over the censors. But the censors aren't always very clever. Sometimes they cut stupid things. The censors' scissors have not cut any of my movies--yet. And I've never changed any of my movies because of the censors. But then again, I've never tried to deal with subjects that might provoke them. And I'm too old to feel honored or gratified if one of my movies were to be banned by the censors.

Your films have performed the service of showing us a side of Iranian life different from the usual picture we get, since American media tend to demonize Iran.

Believe me, sometimes when I am in this country I see images from Iran that terrify me. And I think, Do I really live in a country like that? I can assure you that the real Iranian society is much closer to my movies than the images you see on TV. It's all a question of what you want to emphasize: the sensational or normal life. In And Life Goes On, I had to decide: do I want to emphasize the calamity of the earthquake, or the beauty of Nature and the character of the people? I'm so proud of my own people--especially when I'm away from them. When I was coming here from Iran, on my way to the Teheran airport I noticed a VW's engine on fire and I stopped to help. Suddenly I saw fifty other people rushing from their cars to help. The man was trying to put out the fire with a raincoat. After the volunteers had extinguished the fire, they didn't stay around to be thanked. That's the kind of image that I have of my people, and that I'd like to put on film.