Film Review: Where is the Friend's House?

 

Where is the Friend's House?  A film by Abbas Kiarostami

This film has been on my list for a long time, but it's not the easiest to come by. I finally found a good deal on a box set of the whole Koker trilogy (or at least a deal I could afford at the time), and combined with a desire to potentially screen this film for my film history class's survey of non-American films, this was enough to finally justify the purchase. Don't read the rest of this if you care about spoilers.

Oh, man.

This movie had me from the opening scene. As in, the very first scene made my cry, and the rest of the time I was on pins and needles. The film opens with a classroom full of boys talking loudly (but not otherwise misbehaving) while they wait for their teacher, who is late. The teacher enters and immediately starts berating the entire class for not keeping their "promise" to sit quietly. He's a fairly archetypal teacher, from what little I've seen of the cinema from this part of the world, though perhaps a bit more prickly than most. He rationalizes his own actions, finds fault with everything, and basically plays the role of the offended God of the classroom, proclaiming his own benevolence, while condemning the base wickedness of all the students, which he is sure must be intentional. His praise is sparse and almost always manipulative. But this is also what the students, and indeed, the audience, seem to expect from him, so he doesn't come off as an outlier. This is just what school is for students in this culture.

He takes things from prickly to cruel, though, when he brings one student to tears for not having his homework done in a notebook. The student, named Mohamed Reza Nematzadeh, did the homework, but brought it on loose sheets of paper, because he accidentally left his notebook at his cousin's house (the cousin confirms this and produces the notebook, too late to be of any use). This is apparently the third time something like this has happened, and that makes it a serious offense. The teacher rips up the completed homework and says that if it happens again, Nematzadeh is going to be expelled. As the teacher says in a later scene, he lets first and second time offenses go, but after three times, he shows "no mercy" to these eight year old boys. 

It was this cruelty—not just the threat, but the systematic, calculated, and truly merciless dressing down of the student—that brought me to tears. It felt like I was witnessing a more devastating act of violence than anything I've seen in an action or horror film, though the teacher never lifts a hand to physically strike the child. I felt violated by the normative injustice of it, and I shuddered to think that anything I might have said or done might have created such an experience for any of my own children or students. That is the great virtue of this film, by the way. It performs the daunting and miraculous task of reminding adults what it's like to be a child just trying to do your best in a world full of adults who, even when sympathetic, are largely uninterested in your concerns. 

You might think from my description that Nematzadeh, or else the teacher, are the main characters of this film, but not so. The protagonist is young Ahmad, who sits next to Mohamed Reza in class, and shows him some simple kindness later that day by helping him pick up spilled school supplies. In the process, however, Ahmad accidentally takes Mohamed Reza's notebook, which is identical to his own. He recognizes the mistake almost as soon as he gets home, and of course he understands how crucial it is to correct his error.

He immediately asks his busy mother for permission to return the book, but she refuses, assuming that he's making excuses for going to play before doing his homework. She's kinder than the teacher, but still doesn't perceive her son's sincerity, and seems to have little time or energy to really listen him. This portrayal will hit close to home for a lot of parents who've found themselves reacting to their kids with impatience and suspicion at times. At last, interpreting Ahmad's reluctance to move on with his homework as time wasting, she sends him to buy bread, and goes upstairs. Seeing his chance, Ahmad grabs Mohamed Reza's notebook and races over the hill to the neighboring village where he's heard his classmate lives. 

The problem for the rest of the film is that Ahmad doesn't know exactly which house to go to, and nobody else seems able (or particularly willing) to help him. 

The portrayal of Ahmad (played by Babek Ahmedpour) really resonated with me. Far from being the negligent, easily distracted child many of the adults in the film dismiss him as, Ahmad is compassionate, focused, and earnestly struggling to navigate the expectations of a world in which he holds none of the power but faces most of the consequences. He recognizes his place in the social structure of his culture, and he never resorts to outbursts or rebellion, as would inevitably be the case in an American film. Instead he remains supremely conscientious and moral, even as his distress grows intolerable, and he seems constantly on the verge of a breakdown. 

Other children in the film are portrayed similarly, as sincere strivers to find their footing in an unjust situation, while most of the grown-ups merely project their own more jaded motivations or assumptions onto the children. It's a jadedness that perhaps comes from the way they were treated as children: a topic the film questions both directly and indirectly. Kiarostami holds up an uncomfortable mirror for adult viewers to see themselves in, made more so by the fact that none of the adults (except arguably the teacher) are portrayed as villainous. They are merely ordinary people, too busy to see how their understandable (though not justifiable) self-interest harms those who depend on them for everything.

Day turns to night, and Ahmad's journey becomes more visually poetic and fantastical as he zigzags back and forth between villages, following any lead he can find. Kiarostami's tight, simple, and straightforward storytelling becomes more obviously metaphorical, leaving the audience with much to ponder and reflect on, including a long monologue from one character about the nature of discipline, and a rambling discourse from another about wooden vs. iron doors. But it's the obliviousness of the adults to Ahmad's distress and his failure to communicate with them that hits the hardest. In the end, Ahmad must reframe his notion of what it means to do the right thing in order to save his friend. That he succeeds is his great triumph, although it feels like mere survival. That he's forced to do so without the help of his seniors is the film's greatest tragedy.

In recent years, popular movies have progressed through plots leaving the fate of nations, the world, multiple worlds, the universe, and when that's not enough, the multiverse hanging in the balance, but rarely in my life have I felt like I was watching a film with such high stakes as this one about returning a lost notebook. 

There's much more that could be said about this film, and maybe I'll dive into it in another post. I have the feeling I'll be processing this film for a while, and I'm eager to watch it again with my class. But if you can get your hands on a copy, why not watch it for yourself and find out? I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.