The Cinema of Asghar Farhadi

 My neighbour in Mumbai is Saeed Mirza, one of the pioneers of the Indian parallel cinema movement. Growing up, I gained a lot of philosophical and political insight from long-drawn conversations with him. He was a Marxist filmmaker who made protest cinema and came with a strong filmmakers’ voice, primarily about themes like alienation, identity and injustice. Often, I used to go to him for feedback on my stories and films. Of the many great anecdotes he shared with me, I was reminded of a few of them during the extraordinary masterclass with Asghar Farhadi. He used to tell me, “Cinema must be a texture-work of a kind; the audience must be able to smell your film” (translated from Hindi) and “Son, don’t try to be clever, be wise. Do not make weightless theme-park movies, you’re more than that.” He encouraged me to develop an intellectual worldview by watching world cinema, and raise moral questions through my work. This is also primarily why I joined film school, to expand my cultural repertoire and find my creative voice. Farhadi’s masterclass was one of the very few classes here at Dodge in the past year that did just that. Just when I was questioning my time in film school, his class reminded me of why I had joined school in the first place.

Farhadi’s own directing philosophy was influenced by Italian Neorealism, particularly Vittorio de Sica. Much like the characteristics of other Italian neorealist cinema, for Farhadi, the ordinary is extraordinary. His characters too are morally grey, and he takes an observational vantage point when he’s writing his films with a refusal to make facile moral judgements. He believes that one cannot judge a person till they aren’t in their shoes. He disagrees with Syd Field’s classification of characters into protagonist and antagonist. And his characters too are inspired by people he has met on his journey.  In his 2009 drama About Elly, the characters are all inspired by his college friends. His films focussed on emotions more than abstract high-flying ideas. One of the things that he mentioned in class which strongly resonated with me was “give feeling, not meaning.” Farhadi uses interesting cinematic techniques to achieve this philosophy. He believes that it is very hard to keep the emotions of a scene intact if you break it up into separate cuts. He likes to shoot emotional scenes in one take, without chopping it up into pieces. This not only helps the actors, but dramatises a the scene and raises emotional stakes. During the editing of The Salesman, he cut out the original ending as he felt it was too intellectual. It was a metaphor and he was trying to be clever. After some discussions with his wife, whom he considers his voice of reason, he decided to make it an emotional ending instead.

Speaking about his blocking, Farhadi feels that in films today, it feels to him as if the blocking has been done by an app or a machine, and not a human being. A blocking tool he uses is that initially he blocks as if there isn’t any camera at all. He just choreographs the chaos and explains the scene to the actors along with emotions. While they’re performing, he intuitively/subconsciously walks around and in between the actors. As if there is “paint on his shoes,” he remembers his footsteps around the actors, and that’s how he knows where to place the camera. However, not all scenes are done like that for him. For example, during the shoot of The Separation, he knew at the beginning itself where the camera had to be places. Farhadi adds that a cliché that comes from theatre is that the characters have to be on one side, and the audience on the other. Directors are scared to bring the camera between the actors. In terms of camera movement, the camera doesn’t have a mind of its own. It is always motivated by the movement of an actor. He uses the movement of the actors and the camera following their choreography to reveal new spaces in the geography of the set.

Speaking about performance and casting, Farhadi advises the students to avoid casting non-actors when they’re just starting out. On speaking with actors, Farhadi spends his first rehearsal just to get to know what kind of actor they are. His communication with them depends on the actor. He allows some to improvise, while others he restricts. But generally, he doesn’t talk to the actors about the subtext or the meaning of the story. He simplifies it, as he believes that the actors shouldn’t be conscious of what the film is trying to say. He advises students to avoid being indirect or complicated, and speak to them in terms of basic human emotions. “Very simple things have great impact,” he says.

About his writing process, Farhadi elucidates that he likes shifting perspectives in his films. Telling stories of single characters is simpler than telling a story of a group of people. However, emotional balance and timing is important here. We need to know how much importance to each characters. When we give each character emotional opportunity in a story, it allows the audience to empathise with the character better instead of stereotyping or typecasting them into a cardboard cut-out. The number of drafts that he writes solely depends on the script. With each rewrite, he just focusses on one subject of the script. Like production design, or just a side character, or camera. Every time he finishes a draft, he gives it to trustworthy people from all walks of life. The biggest question he wants to know is if it’s engaging enough. Farhadi believes that films don’t have to be boring for it to be arthouse.

He uses pen and paper to write, traditionally. He doesn’t begin with a scene breakdown or heavy outlining. He just writes notes and puts them up on the walls. They are colour coded. The green ones are the ideas he loves, yellow is doubtful and the red ones are to be discarded. When he is working on the timeline of a story, he simply puts the notes in order. For him, pacing or playing with something makes it easier to stay focussed while he is ideating. However, there is no right way. Everyone has their own style. Farhadi believes that for filmmakers, relationships with ordinary people is critically important. He is constantly worried that disconnecting from people will affect his work. Therefore, his stories don’t say bad things about any characters as he gets into their head when he writes. 

One of the things that I love about Farhadi’s work was that it is effortlessly subversive. In his films, the politics of Tehran and its bigotry play out in the background, but in the foreground is always a human story about the complexities of relationships. Most audiences connect more with relatable human emotions than with politics, context or themes. Farhadi understands this. His films are more emotional than cerebral, which is a rarity in politically subversive cinema. Some of the things that he shared in his class really resonated with me as I aspire to make cinema that deals with ideas and expands human consciousness. In Fireworks Wednesday, Farhadi has created a subtle metaphorical relationship between the family and the society outdoors. The entire story takes place in a single day, which is the day of Fireworks Wednesday. Every year in Iran, the festival is full of anger and aggression, much like the house itself in the film. 

Farhadi is a master of subtle, subconscious metaphors in his visual language. In Fireworks Wednesday, the production design has been designed according to the character development of the female protagonist Mozhde. The chaotic production design of the house symbolises the mania in Mozhde’s inner monologues. On the other hand, her neighbour’s flat is red and flowery. The audience can understand why her husband Morteza is attracted to the neighbour. Even in terms of cinematography, Farhadi’s DP, as he says, “really understands the value of darkness.” Since the setting of the film, that is the exterior of the apartment, is critical to the story, the DP created special filters for the windows to expose both the interiors and exteriors of the space. Farhadi prefers to cut his films classically, and doesn’t want his camera to create any judgement between the characters. 

There is a lot of other valuable insight he shared during his course. The word limit isn’t enough to put down the depths of his imagination and philosophy. As he puts it correctly, “I don’t know who is inside of me, I am calm but he’s not calm.” His mind truly has a mind of its own. He has an unfathomable mind of a creative genius. This course expanded my mind to new levels and I have already started applying his techniques in my own work.