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Ten (2002)

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21 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
9 times out of 10, it works... not a bad ratio!, 8 October 2002

Author: toclement

The front-page review of this film simply doesn't do this marvelous film justice. Renowned Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami takes an innovative approach at giving us a very deep glimpse not only into the life of mother and child, but also into Iran, its society and the situation of women transitioning to a more assertive role in society (however, I don't think one should be confused that the issues women face in Iran are not relevant to women elsewhere in the world, including the West).

The film has two fixed camera angles, one giving us a view of the driver-side and the other a view of the passenger side of an automobile. The driver is a mother who has left her husband and now resides with her new lover (she is the common thread in all ten "episodes"). Each sequence places a different person in the passenger seat, with particular emphasis on her son (who rides in four of the 10 scenes, if I'm not mistaken).

It is this mother-son relationship that is at the crux of the film, and for good reason. The performances of these two characters was nothing short of amazing. The boy in particular, with every eye-twitch, frown, smile, and outburst was able to convey a frighteningly realistic portrayal of a boy who is all at once obstinate, angry, disrespectful, and immature, yet still sweet and somewhat an innocent victim of the situation. He is unforgiving to his mother for walking out on him and "breaking up the family" and is reluctant to accept any explanation his mother offers. They trade barbs and though the love is there, you can see the seeds already planted in the young adolescent of a society that subordinates women to their male partners. Here, it is so profound that even a pre-teen lectures his mother on right and wrong.

The mother bounces back and forth between defending herself to accepting blame, showing the cracks of guilt that clearly lie beneath her composed and beautiful surface. And it's a beauty that her son can't recognize: she's a sexy passionate woman with needs of not just a mother but also as a lover and a liver; but like all children he can only see her as an adult and a mother.

The other key character involves a friend who desperately seeks a life partner, but finds herself unsuccessful at every turn. Most recently, a man she has been seeing tells her that he cannot marry her because he does not love her. She coyly reveals from under her veil that in her grief she has shaved her head completely. This act is astonishing not because it is defiant but because it is terribly charming. She can't offer an explanation as to why she has done it, but no explanation is necessary. Who hasn't at some time when an ego has been made fragile by rejection, sought to change hair, clothing, face, self? And it is with this scene, with veil pulled back, that the woman's beauty is uncovered, not because we see her hair or her bald head, but because of the insight the shaving act gives to her character, and her innocent embarrassment brings a smile to her tear-stained face that lights up the screen.

I give the film a 9 and not a 10 because of one sequence involving a conversation with a prostitute in the passenger seat. Presumably the driver has given a ride to hitch-hiker, leading to an intelligent conversation/debate about the world's oldest profession. But this scene seemed a little out-of-place, contrived, and added little to the more general theme of the rest of the film. This one slip-up notwithstanding, "Ten" is a creative and wonderful experience for film lovers who seek something out of the ordinary. And it has a final scene which punctuates the film perfectly.

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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Conveys a searing emotional honesty, 14 October 2002
Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

Ten conversations, four passengers, two digital cameras using two camera angles, one angry young boy, one agitated mother, and one great film director. That is the essence of the remarkable new film, Ten, by acclaimed Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami. Using only two small video cameras strapped to the dashboard of a car to eavesdrop on a series of semi-improvised conversations, Ten is a highly original film that has an experimental feel to it yet manages to convey a searing emotional honesty.

The opening fifteen-minute exchange between a divorced mother ((Mania Akbari) and her son Amin (Amin Maher) as she drives him to a swimming pool is amazing in its intensity. I don't think I've ever seen any sequence in a film quite like it. Amin urges his mother to allow him to live with his father rather than his stepfather. The camera does not leave the boy who expresses emotions seemingly beyond his age, articulating anger, frustration, and self-pity with sharp intelligence and humor. His mother is deeply unhappy about her relationship with Amin but stubbornly refuses to bend to his desires. The opening sequence reaches such an emotional peak that the remaining conversations become almost anti-climactic.

Other conversations examine the emotional lives and attitudes of the driver and her passengers. These include an old woman who visits the local mausoleum three times a day and tries to persuade Akbari to go to and pray with her. Another depicts Akbari's sister who discusses the mother's relationship with her son and new husband. In one of the best sequences, a laughing prostitute gets into the car thinking the driver is a man and asserts how women cling to men as their only source of strength. She claims that marriage and prostitution are different facets of the same business - the married woman sells sex wholesale the prostitute retail. Indeed, a recurring theme in the film is that, in Iran today, men dominate the society and thwart women's desire for emancipation.

All of these conversations expound diverse opinions about women in Iran and look at issues from a woman's point of view. The camera is trained almost exclusively on one of the participants and does not shift back and forth regardless of whom is talking. The only sound and light emanate from the natural street environment which can be very dark as in the nighttime vignette with the prostitute. In the process of these conversations, some new things about Iranian society are revealed, for example, that a woman can get a divorce by falsely accusing her husband of drug abuse. Kiarostami reminds us of the restrictions on wearing the veil, particularly in a scene where the friend removes her veil to expose her shaven head, something that must have caused the censors to scratch theirs.

As the film moves toward its conclusion, Amin's mother seems to acquire an inner strength that allows her to let events unfold more naturally. She offers advice to two other women who have experienced disappointment in their relationships and acknowledges that winning and losing are but two sides of the same coin. Most importantly, Akbari states many times that `you must love yourself before you can love anyone else'. This leads to another drive with Amin during which the mother is more able to just be with her son without having to discuss plans or expectations. I found Ten, though not always easy to be with, a deeply humanistic work and an extremely rewarding experience.

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Iran: Most significant cinema today?, 12 January 2006

Author: Gareth Nolan from Dublin, Ireland

My experience with Iranian film is pretty superficial having only seen a handful, but none have disappointed me. I saw Kiarostami's early film Where Does The Friend Live? and was completely blown away. I then saw Saalam Cinema by Iran's other giant Mohsen Makhmalbaf - and then I realised just how important this country's output has been.

Ten did nothing to diminish this view, and I'll try not to repeat much of what's already been said here. I saw an Iranian person on this site claim that there was too much lost in the translation from Farsi to English. This is always the case with translation, but I am quite sure Ten gets away with it. I recently saw Ingmar Bergman's Saraband and if you think language being stilted ruins a movie then I am sure seeing that film will shatter the view. The single thing that destroys it in both cases is the incredible power of the acting - the truth lies in their facial expression. I am quite sure 9 out of 10 people asked without context would swear blind Ten was a documentary.

In the western world overrun by "reality" TV, its significance is lost on some, but if you take the time to realise that these people are actually acting - and more than likely doing it for the first time - thats where the power lies. Try taking this film, put it in America and put Hollywood A-Listers in the car and see where it goes. Basically, how you could call both what they do and what happens in this film acting is opened to debate. This is true of the majority of Iranian output.

Ten would be significant for these reasons alone, but when you take into account how much insight you gain into the life of a woman in there who tries to say no to male domination and to "love herself" it really comes into its own. This is the case of much of this countries output - and what sets is far apart from other countries. What we learn ultimately is this struggle, though perhaps more explicit in Iran, is a struggle felt by all women in the world. It's a film which in that way unites rather than divides which in light of Iran's current status in global affairs is what probably what makes it one of the more important Cinema's in the world.

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
An Intense and Impressive Insight in the Women's World in Iran, 19 December 2005

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"Ten" really impressed me for many reasons. The first one is the interpretation of the non-professional actresses and the boy Amin Maher. It is simply amazing the first sequence (number 10) with fifteen minutes of dialogs between the lead character and her son without any cut. The second reason is the intense and impressive insight in the repressed women's world in Iran. I believe that most of the Westerns have no idea about the feelings and the culture of Iranian women, and Abbas Kiarostami shows very real dialogs picturing the lifestyle of a middle class woman and some samples in other women of different classes (the prostitute, the religious woman etc.). The third reason was the simplicity and the originality of the location: inside a car, with a divorced woman transporting her resented son; her sister; a prostitute; an old lady; and a romantic young woman, along different days. I would never imagine such a splendid scenario for a movie with such a theme. Last but not the least, the remarkable beauty of the face of the driver (Mania Akbari) is awesome: she is exotic for Brazilian standards, but really a very beautiful woman. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "10 Dez" ("10 Ten")

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
To Watch Foreign Films is to Understand that We're All Alike..., 2 January 2007

Author: dcplaw from United States

The premise is very simple. A beautiful Iranian woman, married to her second husband (in a society that makes divorce nearly impossible for women to obtain) drives her car around town. She takes her son to a swim meet, goes shopping with her sister, gives an old woman a lift to Prayer, etc. The title of the film refers to the fact that there are 10 "chapters" to the film, each representing a different conversation she has with her various passengers on different days. By experiencing these exchanges, the viewer can expect a crash course on middle class life in Iran. Like middle class life anywhere, there are the written rules and conventions that one must obey, and then there are the practicalities, and the REalities. There is what is true, and what people tell themselves is true; what they want, and what they tell themselves they want. As in any society on earth, including this highly controlled, religiously based one, there is the hypocrisy. And we can soon see from the conversations our Driver has with her passengers, that there are also the largely unspoken hopes, fears, needs and insecurities of these people, who often appear to be going through the motions of life, rather than truly living it.

The film mostly focuses on how women view this world; but their perspective is primarily organized around and driven by their relationships with men, be they fathers, boyfriends, husbands or sons. The film is difficult to watch at first, because things quickly escalate into discomfort with the driver's very first passenger, but sticking it out is well worth the investment, as the exchanges each build on the ones that came before it, getting progressively deeper and deeper.

The women in this film are covered from head to foot, but still manage to lay themselves completely bare to us. It's a very simple concept, elevated to an amazing accomplishment. You will learn a great deal about life in Iran, people in general, and possibly yourself. I expect to be thinking about this movie for weeks, if not much much longer.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
real life, riding by, 30 April 2003

Author: Jeremy (jeremydee@aol.com) from Gaithersburg, Maryland

Yes, it's a gimmick: the entire film is shot from the dashboard of a car, and only the driver and the passenger are heard and (sometimes) seen. This gimmick will not please everyone, and hardly qualifies the film as a masterpiece. But Hitchcock's brilliant "Rear Window" was a gimmick too, and Kiarostami's "10" is no less worthy of attention. A movie has to be done well, regardless of its tricks, and "10" fits the bill. The driver of the car also drives the conflict; she is a recently divorced Iranian woman in a country in which women barely have the right to divorce at all. As the city rushes past--it's great fun to watch the people and places outside--she curses the drivers and pedestrians along the way but holds her own against the crises in the passenger's seat. Funny thing about a car: it gives one the sense of control (here, that's clearly an illusion) and the oxymoronic ability to remain private even while out in public. She and her women passengers air their grievances within this zone of safety; a scene in which a passenger slowly removes her head covering, a symbol of repression, is moving and unsettling. The greatest conflict, however, is between the driver and her young son, who's bitter about the divorce and lets his mother unravel until he, not she, controls where the car is heading. The boy's performance is astonishingly real, as much for the way he fills the silences as for his sharp and sometimes humorous counterpoints. The film could have done without the "countdown" of the 10 conversations--the source of the title--but no matter: everything in between is a delight.

8 out of 10

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
intriguing, exploratory and honest, 6 October 2002

Author: Babak H. Seradjeh from Vancouver, Canada

Ten is an intriguing movie. Kiarostami explores the abilities of digital camera by mounting it at just two fixed angles on the dashboard of a car, showing us almost only the driver's and the passenger's faces. Such a stationary structure surprises by its moving content, which takes shape as the movie unfolds.

The driver is a young Iranian divorcée, recently remarried, whose conversations with a son, sisters, a young and an old woman makes up the ten episodes of the movie.

The performance taken from the kid is astonishingly natural, and other characters also appear to be just playing their everyday lives. Kiarostami opens an eye through the little gap of its two fixed digital cameras on the mundane facts of the Iran's capital life as experienced by a typical middle-class woman. The plots are so natural no one can find a better way of experiencing the knotted, contradictory complexity of such a woman's life in Iran from outside. The flow is of the scenes is smooth and the dialogues are, at least to the Iranian audience, courageous and funny, though familiar at the same time. It's a movie worth watching more than once.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautiful film and simple Lesson of cinema., 26 November 2007

Author: axlro5e5uck5 from France

The film shows ten rides of a female cab-driver in modern Teheran. The protagonist (a sunglasses-wearing beautiful woman) share a ride with her son, her sister, an old faithful lady, a prostitute and a female stranger. She discuss life and social issues, and repeatedly argue with her son about her recent divorce with the boy's dad.

The movie is technically interesting and well shaped.

---- Structure The film rolls the 10 sequences introduced by a a classic old school countdown which creates a sense of formal structure, giving the film an apparent "rigid" putting the audience as "analyst".

---- Camera and Sound Only two camera angles are used in the film (beside an odd little part where we see the prostitute outside of the car ...). And the sound is very basically real and full (city's life and traffic).

---- Content But above all, despise what some will say about the apparent boringness of the film, the content is amazingly absorbing. The issues raised are universal (divorce, women's position in society, love, despair, faith ...) and perfectly rendered by these non-actors.

One last point, the female protagonist is BEAUTIFUL !

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
10 of course, 21 September 2007

Author: (Niv_Savariego) from Tel Aviv

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

What an achievement! Kiarostami outdoes himself in this film, perfecting his movie poetry beyond its previous limits.

Actually, this film has no name. When the first frame shows the number 10 on the screen, we latch on to it for our name. But it couldn't have one. What we have here is the countdown to an actual film, ten preliminary frames before the story will begin. In between the countdown we catch glimpses of a car going somewhere. Just like the film we never get to see (the "real" one, the one that will begin after the countdown), we also never get to see the car's destination. Only the preliminary voyage. Everything is deferred, off-center, outside our field of vision. There are no men in this film, only women and a child. All relationships and families are broken, breaking up. No center just a periphery, a liminal space in between.

The protagonist, an independent, self-centered woman, is almost like a man. Her son is almost like a man as well. The dialogs rotate mostly around Men or God or Truth (surely the protagonists of the film that will follow our countdown). As usual, Kiarostami deals with his favorite subjects: hierarchy (Who decides where the car will turn? Who gives the orders? Who gives the lecture?), economy ("You are the whole-sellers and we are the retailers," says the prostitute to the protagonist), friendship and belonging. As well as the always distant (distanced, retreating) truth, the voice or presence outside the frame.

But because everything is deferred, we never get to see a "real" woman as well. Only reflections, hints. Perhaps the protagonist's mother, her son's grandmother, is a "real" woman, a true Source. Perhaps that's why he insists on being taken to her (but they will get there only after the countdown is over).

There are many touching scenes. The exposing of the shaved head, the prostitute's laughter, the protagonist's question "will she say her prayers?", when her son tells her that his father's future wife will be better than her. Cinematic poetry shot in DV inside a car, how could that be?

This film forces the viewer to work, to guess, to create. It is a "writerly" film (a la Barthes). In a way it is a certain 'denuding' of Kiarostami's previous work, or perhaps just an echo, an introduction, a countdown to it. To say that Kiarostami's films are about Iran, is like saying that Bergman's films are about Sweden.

10 out of 10.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A Wonderful Film............, 21 August 2006

Author: Tilly Gokbudak from Roanoke, Va.

I have seen many impressive Iranian films over the years. "Ten" may be the very best of them for a variety of reasons. I think the film is remarkable because it looks so simple, but I imagine setting up the camera and capturing the realistic dialogue and plot-line we see in the film had to have taken a lot of preparation. I also think the director deliberately chose scenery to accommodate the backdrop of the film, and he must have driven around Teheran constantly to figure out which images to put in the background. I think the scenes with the murals of new arch-conservative president are very telling. "Ten" seems to have a lot of messages under the radar, including the subversive powers of all governments (certainly including our own in America) to censor art. I think the relationship between the mother and her son is a very poignant one, and it shows how children and adults simply live in different spheres of the universe. Film is strikingly similar in some aspects to American independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson's film "Signal 7" which came out over 20 years ago.

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