Censorship Slapdown

Khosrow versus Farhad + Shirin = Iranian government versus artists and women.

The images are banned but the thoughts and emotions still exist and wander freely.

Ingenious equipollent synthesis of freedom and restriction.

Ingenious contrast of intellectual/emotional/spiritual liberty within physical conformity.

Ingenious illumination of raw innocence and truth unveiled in darkness.

Ingenious creation of a film that viewers must complete for themselves.

And an ingenious method of slapping down various types of censorship implemented by certain cultural officials within the Iranain government.

I think Shirin is his best film (but not my personal favourite) because it encapsulates everything he's ever filmed and everything he's been trying to express for decades.

Blacken out the image, the images still exist in the mind and heart and soul.

Sew up my eyes and plug up my ears and destroy my art and box me in a cage with black cloth draped over it: the images and imagination and thoughts still exist in the mind and heart and soul.

Kiarostami has sacrificed and martyred his films, just as Shirin and present-day Iranian women have sacrificed and martyred themselves, and his Shirin (2008) is sum total of everything he has tried to express cinematically.

Even though he's obviously still making films, none will ever be remotely on the same level as all the films he has created up to Shirin. While watching Shirin, I felt like he was on a supernovae trip, and when the credits began, I felt like a door was shut on something that he no longer wished to explore.

Thank you Abbas, it's not one of my favourites (even tie between Ta'm E Guilass and Bad Ma Ra Khahad Bord), but you out-Kiarostamied yourself and closed the door on the past, it's your cinematic masterwork and you've reduced me to tears once again.