Synopsis
A collection of 24 short four-and-a-half minutes films inspired by still images, including paintings and photographs. An experimental project made by filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in the last three years of his life.
24 Frames
2017 Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
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The art form stripped down to its most necessary functions: it's fitting that Abbas Kiarostami's final film, 24 Frames -- a stone cold masterpiece of the highest order and one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 21st century so far -- should be about extending the still image beyond its confines and exploring its elastic temporality through a cinematic perspective or, in other words, simultaneously resurrecting the dead and giving life to the merely "existent." Kiarostami's films, too, and this one in particular -- a minimal and meditative love letter to the world he'd soon be leaving behind and the landscapes, various creatures, and artistic mediums that inhabit it -- will allow the late, great Iranian master to become…
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Abbas Kiarostami, the great Iranian postmodernist who died last summer at the age of 76, used to say that he preferred the kind of movies that put their audience to sleep. “Some films have made me doze off in the theater,” he would explain, “but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for for weeks.” So while I passed out (and passed out hard) roughly 15 minutes into “24 Frames,” the fascinating, posthumously completed non-narrative project that will serve as Kiarostami’s final farewell, I suspect that he wouldn’t take my unconsciousness as a criticism or a show of disrespect.
On the contrary, I…
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“I absolutely don’t like the films in which the filmmakers take their viewers hostage and provoke them. I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks. Those are the kind of films I like.”
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69/100
A.V. Club review. Had I seen this with zero foreknowledge (minus the initial, proof-of-concept frame using "The Hunters in the Snow"), odds are I would have moderately enjoyed it at face value, as Kiarostami's version of something like Benning's 13 Lakes (which I did in fact moderately enjoy). Each shot is beautifully composed, and while I might have marveled at how frequently animals seem to spontaneously provide a mini-narrative, or noticed that some of their movements don't look entirely natural, the degree of manipulation involved almost certainly would not have occurred to me. Once you know what's going on, though—and Kiarostami (or someone, anyway) makes a point of telling you up front—elements that would otherwise have been merely pleasing…
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A photo-chemical reversal. The beginning of Abbas Kiarostami's final film, depicting 'The Hunters in the Snow' from 1565, is a birth of the universe moment from which all of cinema bellowed out, much like the smoke stacks given life as the painting begins to be (selectively) animated. Each image is a complete existence, contextualized by sound and living things passing in and out of frame, a reminder of what is beyond and what is visible. They're encased in time - frozen, forever the same, and yet they move with startling unpredictability. Each 'frame' is constructed out of many, many individual frames, but their fixed nature doesn't cancel a potent sense of replication - a lack of capture giving way…
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Paradoxes are built into the very technology of cinema, where time is measured in units of physical distance. The title of 24 Frames, Abbas Kiarostami’s final feature, is, of course, a reference to the broadly accepted standard framerate of filming, but it is also an invocation of “frame” as a more holistic notion of composition and intent. Each of the 24 images that the director expands is a compelling snapshot given new, hyperreal life with in-camera effects and animations that create motion in occasionally eerie, jittery ways that call attention to the artifice of cinema. From the outset, in which Kiarostami digitally animates Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Hunters in the Snow with smoky chimneys, fluttering birds and herded livestock,…
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Still life and motionless death wrapped in an endless cycle of harmony and disharmony.
24 Frames begins with a still of Pieter Bruegel's painting The Hunters in the Snow, so you already know it's going to be god-tier. Then, the picture suddenly comes to life: billowing smoke is seen reaching towards the sky from two chimneys, and the snow starts to gently climb down from the clouds. A dog is heard barking and soon appears onscreen. Cows are seen crossing the snow-cushioned pathway between the two lakes at a leisurely pace. All is peaceful. Flow-like. Then, gradually, the white smoke from the chimneys dissolves in the windless sky, and the snow ceases to fall. The dog leaves the…
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24 Frames is a celebration of the sublimity of existence. A perfect farewell. Ultimately, the eternalization of Kiarostami’s essence: an A.I. chip of his consciousness. If only every legendary filmmaker could compose one final document encapsulating the essence of their perception. We need an archive of transcendental swan songs that launch us into the mind’s eye of the aesthetic masterminds of film and literature.
