Life, and Nothing More…

Life, and Nothing More… (1992) is the second part of Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, and it leaves the line between fact and fiction deliberately unfixed. An earthquake struck Iran in 1990 and killed more than fifty thousand people. Kiarostami had made a film in that region a few years earlier. In this one, a director and his son drive into the ruins looking for the children who acted in it. So the film addresses a real disaster by referring to its own predecessor, through a fictional director. Kiarostami is not in it. An actor plays him. The subject is not grief, it is continuation. People in the rubble are putting up television aerials because there is a World Cup match. Someone holds a wedding beside a collapsed house. The film presents none of this as strange. It presents it as life, which is what the title says. Most of the cast are local people who actually lived through it. It runs 95 minutes. Good for: Iranian cinema, art film, and work that sits between documentary and fiction. Less good for: there is almost no plot and nearly all of it happens on a road. It asks for patience.