The Anklets - A short story.

 

10 by Abbas Kiarostami : A review.  

Anitha Menon. 

(Anu Zafaran)

Abbas Kiarostami's film "10" (2002) is an innovative and thought provoking docufiction film shot in ten segments and located entirely inside the confines of a car. The film presents a series of ten candid conversations, via dashboard cameras, that the driver, a lady, has with a variety of passengers which includes her son, her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and a jilted bride, as she drives through the streets of Tehran. The cast includes Mania Akbari as the driver of the car  and Amina Maher as Amin, Roya Akbari as the sister. It was nominated for the Palme d'or at the 55th Cannes Film Festival and got several positive reviews by film critics globally. The eavesdropping camera manages to catch the anxieties and problems of domestic life in a theocratic state which gives no value to women and succeeds in painting a picture of Iran itself. 

In the first segment of the film, Mania Akbari, the woman driver of the car and her son (Amina Maher) talk about the effects of the divorce of his parents on the child, his behavioral problems, the challenges of growing up and sets the tone for the intense, troubled, almost dueling nature of their conversations. In the next conversation, with her sister, they discuss the recent divorce and remarriage of the driver and its complications in the relationship with her son. In another conversation we meet a lonely, devout old lady who finds refuge in religion to escape from her life's tragedies of loss. In yet another segment we come across a prostitute who talks openly about love, marriage, sex and declares married women are wholesalers of sex while they are the retailers. The sex worker reveals that she was once engaged to man and says women are idiots who believe that men are truthful. She feels pity for those women who cling to men and says she enjoys her no-strings attached lifestyle.  As soon as she is dropped off, she gets picked up by a client. In the next conversation a young woman who has been jilted by her fiancé goes to a mausoleum to pray to get him back even though she had been an unbeliever earlier on. The driver tells her that even though she herself has been to the mausoleum,  she has never had any miracles in her life. Later the driver picks up her son Amin from his father, both parents sitting in the car while the child crosses the busy road by himself. Amin asks to be taken to his grandmother's house, they disagree about the route but eventually reach the place. Amin tells his mother that his father has been watching porn at home. The next passenger in the car is the driver's sister who has been left by her husband after seven years together.  She cannot stop sobbing and the driver tells her harshly not to be clingy, almost echoing the voice of the sex worker. She asks her sister to be tough and strong. In the following section, the driver is with Amin again and she tells him that a woman advised her to let Amin grow up with his father as he is a boy. They have a conversation about Amin's father and say that he should remarry. Amin says that the second wife would be better than his own mother as she would be more obedient,  would do all the housework and be at home. From their conversation we understand that the driver is a photographer who doesn't always have time for housework. Mother and son are argumentative and disagree about everything and he gets out of the car abruptly. All through the film, we see the bustling city through the windows of the car, the winding roads, how the other drivers react to the woman driver and vice versa as its interior becomes a personal space traversing the public space, navigating through life itself.  

Even though the setting of the film is restricted, the two cameras on the dashboard create a space for raw, genuine interactions between the driver and the various passengers. The audience is taken on this almost voyeuristic journey into the lives of the  characters allowing us to get a deeper insight into their fears, worries, and opinions through which Kiarostami quite deftly presents the social context of the film. 

The dialogues in the movie, full of deeper layers of meaning, sprinkled with humor and wry observations keep the pace and interest of the viewer.  Through his minimalistic storytelling  Kiarostami is able extract powerful and naturalistic performances from his actors. The structure and tight visuals of the film allows the audience room for interpretation and reflection. When the ten segments end, another film unspools itself in the spectators imagination completing what the screen leaves unsaid. 

At a Melbourne Film Festival forum Kiarostami talked about the genesis of "Ten" where episodes revolved round  a psychologist who owing to renovations in her clinic is forced to carry out her sessions in the car. Though this idea did not materialize,  its seed remained and evolved in a more powerful way through "Ten." Through the informal discussions on topics of marriage, children, sex, on issues that trouble both the individual at a private level and the socio-cultural level, by addressing taboo topics honesty without devolving into mere 'case studies', Kiarostami makes " Ten" a movie to remember. 

In "Ten" it is often the 'voice' that we hear, the figure of the speaker coming later or left in darkness as in the case of the prostitute and the devout woman. In one of the segments, we see the boy, agitated, gesticulating, and shouting but we only hear the voice of the mother and imagine her appearance through the tone and timbre of her voice. When she appears finally on screen, it is almost like an unveiling of someone exposed to public scrutiny. It is an Islamic state where women are subjected to dress codes and many restrictions. In one of the sections we see the passenger lifting her headscarf to let some cool air in on her skin. The unveiling happens here in a literal sense and we as audience feel as stifled as she does. 

The verbal sparring between the boy and his mother which begins the film and also ends it is the framework around which everything else is built. The car is the space where the mother and son talk freely but also the space that triggers them into bursts of anger and frustration. The boy accuses his mother of having lied in court that his father takes drugs. The mother replies that it was a necessity as Islamic courts offer very few options for women to obtain divorce.  In their dialogues the boy gives back to his mother as good as he gets with sharp retorts. The son's words often echo a male perspective,  perhaps that of his father. Yet, we do notice mother and son are equally good at arguing with each other. The boy clearly dislikes his mother's new partner and does not want to be driven there. The car is often used as a symbol in Kiarostami's movies like 'The Taste of Cherry' (1997) or 'And Life Goes On' (1992) in ' Ten' the car is a symbol of internal space, both literally and metaphorically,  there are no exterior shots of the car in the movie. 

As a social commentary the film throws light on the position of women in Iranian society. Aminah's character struggles to find a balance between societal constraints and her own wish for freedom. Iranian women live in an atmosphere of gender disparities in everyday lives, inequality at work, denial of legal rights - child custody in divorce cases or inheritance rights, or forced to obey a strict dress code that makes them wear a hijab with punishments in case of violation. They are denied access to social interactions and are under the constant vigilance of the " moral police." The conversations in "Ten" bring out these embedded tensions in a way that the audience can understand and sympathize with. 

While watching the film, I was thinking about  the novel "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi as both the novel and the film share the theme of repression of women in contemporary Iranian society. While we come across a group of women navigating the challenges of living in a conservative society through their emotionally charged words in the film " 10," we meet a group of young women who gather in Nafisi's home to read and  discuss books that were banned by Iranian authorities. Through their discussions these women find empowerment, solace and intellectual freedom. Both the film and the book look into ways to assert personal and intellectual freedom in a country that imposes restrictions on them. The film's framework of a car being driven around also resonated with Panah Panahi's ( son of exiled Jafar Panahi who was a directorial assistant of Abbas Kiarostami ) " Hit the Road'' (2015) a film in which an Iranian family drive their son to the border to escape persecution. The car,  in Iranian cinema, becomes a trope of exploring relationships in a neutral space with the possibility of finding new horizons. Kiarostami was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, Persian cinema movement and gave importance to the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling in dealing with political and philosophical issues. 

"10" is a must-watch for viewers who enjoy realistic, incisive films that speak boldly about life under restrictions. It is also interesting to watch the naturalistic interactions between the mother and son. Although much is said to be lost in translation from the original Farsi,  we are still able to enjoy it and appreciate the woman's struggle to live her life the way she likes it, without any male dictums.