Imagine you live in a remote Iranian village cut off from Tehran and you see your house in a movie, your friend’s house in a movie, your aunt and uncle and lastly everyone around you all in the same movie. This is exactly what happened in Koker when Abbas Kiarostami who is arguably the greatest Iranian director decided to shoot ‘Where is the Friend’s House’ in Koker all the way back in 1987. His affair with Koker didn’t end there as he went on to direct two more films in Koker which were – ‘And Life Goes On’ in 1992 and finally ‘Through the Olive Trees” in 1994. He used the local people as his actors and used their real-life houses and locations to serve as locations for his film. Each film is more meta than the other as each newer installation of this loose trilogy refers to the earlier films as ‘fiction’ and itself as what is really happening.
The authenticity of the setting and the people of Koker in the film are what make it a fine piece of cinema in my opinion. To give you an idea of the films and its connection to each other, “Where is the Friends house” is about a young boy who has to give his friend his notebook before dusk or risk him being expelled from the school. In the next movie “And Life Goes On”, it is shown that the director of the first film seeks out the protagonist of the former film as a real-life earthquake had struck Koker and its neighboring regions. In the final installation of this trilogy “Through the Olive Trees”, It is shown that the journey of the director in “And Life Goes On” is scripted and is part of film and shooting that journey is what is real and is nonfiction. The Koker trilogy definitely is one of the most meta trilogies of all-time with its constant unraveling’s to what’s fiction and what’s nonfiction.
This blog however is not about the films but simply about the meta world of Koker as we see in all three films through the lens of Abbas Kiarostami and his team. What interests me is that was there any reality to any of these films? When we go to watch a fiction film, it is clearly established that everything we see is fake, in fact I would go further and say that all of cinema is an illusion of reality and everyone pushes the story they want to see on screen which means nothing is ever truly real even if it’s a nonfiction film. I would say all the 3 films with their central stories were fake but were the extras also fake? Were they civilians who were portraying themselves in a film or were they just actors hired as extras. This question only arises in my mind because there are three layers to this trilogy and all of them claim to be real but their successor counters that claim and announces itself as the real one, set in the real world. By following the line of films, “Through the Olive Trees”, should be the one that’s real, filled with extras who are just portraying themselves in their own hometown. The thing that contradicts this is that even this film is not real as Kiarostami and his team are filming a story about a director filming his film. In my opinion, although there are three layers of meta world present in the Koker Trilogy, none of them is even remotely real and Abbas Kiarostami and his team are just drawing from their own experience in “Through the Olive Trees.”
With this established in my mind that the films aren’t remotely real what becomes the bigger question is about the people especially the extras in all of the films, were they real or were they just actors? I for the most part love this trilogy due to its extras and their presence on screen. Their colorful houses and their mannerisms are what makes Koker so simple yet so beautiful. People in Koker as we saw in the films, love to discuss mundane things, gossip about their neighbors, complain about Tehran and the city life, plug in their businesses in any conversation and just sit quietly in the village. There is love, there are fights and there is heartbreak between the people all in the small village of Koker. But how much of it was real? How much of this admirable community I’ve grown to love is real?
Factually speaking it is known that all the actors in all three movies were from Koker and none of them were professionally trained actors. Were they just being themselves in the film or were lines fed to them to push the narrative on is something that’s not known. If the latter is the case, I personally feel that would lessen the authenticity of the films and the setting and this concept of putting normal civilians in front of the camera would become another ruse of cinema. I will personally go on believing they were all real people who were just being themselves in front of the camera. Going about their daily lives and talking like they normally do, completely and unapologetically being themselves. I would hate to ever get to know the woman taking care of her child in “And Life Goes On” was an actor or that all those school children from “Through the Olive Trees” were fed lines. It is those people that made these films memorable for me and their presence that makes this trilogy stand out for me. There is no way of knowing for sure what the real objective answer here is and maybe there isn’t any.
Kiarostami revolutionized cinema when the Koker trilogy ended in 1994, he seamlessly transitioned from fiction and documentary film in the trilogy and successfully crafted a meta world where what’s real and what’s fiction is unclear. He successfully has managed to confuse me about what was real in this meta world. In the end, its still unclear what was non-fiction and what was fiction. The space to interpret these films is vast and still uncharted, which is what makes them special as you too can watch them and make up your mind about what you believe is real and what you believe is fake. To conclude, I highly encourage the reader to watch these films and indulge in this meta world and go on this journey of distinguishing the line between fiction and nonfiction.
- Written by Rae Khanna
a