Framing and Structure in Life and Nothing More

Analysis of Abbas Kiarostami's Life and Nothing More

Framing and Structure in Life and Nothing More

In Abbas Kiarostami’s film Life and Nothing More, framing is used to criticize postmodern humanity.  In the film, a director and his son travel through Iran, meeting numerous people who struggle to balance themselves after a massive earthquake that killed over 40,000 people.  The pair get lost in the plot through many tangents, bringing into the issues presented by framing.  In this film, framing draws our attention to the idea that in postmodern society, humans are helpless without a way to escape from their reality.  Even in dire situations that should not be overlooked, people still try to find ways to escape from this reality.  They find ways to escape through structure and framing, but when this structure is no longer present, these people become lost and helpless.

Abbas Kiarostami criticizes postmodern society by using framing as a source of escape in Life and Nothing More.  Framing is a source of escape in this film.  About half way through the movie, the director and his son take a man to a film house he is staying at.  In that village, destruction is pertinent.  The director pauses for a moment and watches a family try to move objects through the destruction.  The family is struggling to move a lamp and a large sack.  Instead of helping the struggling family, the director watches them.  The camera then shows the remains of some sort of structure.  The only thing left standing is a wall with a painting hung on it, and a doorway with no door.  Here Kiarostami uses framing to show the director’s escape.  The camera zooms in past the destruction of the wall through the open doorway on the Iranian landscape.  With this zoom, we do not see any destruction, but instead a beautiful landscape.  With this, Abbas Kiarostami allows the audience to escape from the terrible circumstances surrounding this image, as does our main character.  The director follows the gaze of the camera and stands in the doorway, taking in the scenery.  The director sees the framed landscape as a way out or an escape from the destruction and heartbreak of the earthquake.  Instead of helping a struggling family, the director instead escapes this tragic reality by walking through a doorway to take in a beautiful landscape.  Although our main character sees this landscape as beautiful in this image, we do not think of it as the source of this destruction.  He found nature to be beautiful and a way to escape through manmade frames.  Kiarostami uses framing in this scene to emphasize the idea that people in a postmodern society try to distance themselves from tragedy and try to escape reality.

This film emphasizes the film medium as a frame and structure.  In postmodern society, film and media effect everything.  They influence what we do, how we dress, and who we think we are as individuals.  In this film, television and media frame an old man’s life.  After the earthquake, the only shelter a man could find was an old movie set.  The set surrounds the man like a frame and emphasizes film’s importance on postmodern culture.  The structure of the set is what keeps this man from becoming helpless.  If it weren’t for that set, this man would have nowhere to go.  It is his means of survival.  This man escaped from the destruction of his home and found safety in something that was meant for entertainment value.  What he is in is not real, but instead something made for fiction.  The man is protected from the destruction of the earthquake in something made specifically for film and entertainment.  This frame shows that this man is surrounded by media, and that media is what is helping him survive.  If he did not have this film set as shelter, he would be without protection.  In other words, if he did not have television or a way to escape reality, he would not survive the aftermath of this earthquake.  It also says that structure is required in postmodern society to keep someone from getting lost or off track.  This idea does not only apply to this man, but to postmodern society in general, saying that we are safe in what we use to escape from reality, and that we require structure.

Yet another example of framing, structure, and media being used as an escape in postmodern society is when the father and son come to a town of tents.  Within the town of tents, the people have somehow managed to save a television and an antenna.  The Brazil-Argentina game has brought the town together.  The literal frame and structure of the television is a source of content that lets them escape from their lives. The townspeople stop rebuilding their houses to watch a game.  Clearly reestablishing your life is more important than a soccer game on the television, but these people need to escape from their tragic surroundings in order to survive.  To these people, escaping is part of survival, and just as important as rebuilding shelter.  This framing of media through the television tells us that media, a source of escape from reality, is necessary for survival.  This is what these people need to survive, to keep moving on.  

Life and Nothing More also utilizes self-reflexivity to emphasize the frame in which we are watching the film.  In the scene where the old man is fetching the boy a drink of water, a production assistant runs on and off screen to assist the old man.  This is meant to give us an aesthetic distance.  It is meant to remind us that we are watching a film and trying to escape reality just like the director and the people he crosses paths with.  Whether it is Transformers or a more thought provoking film like this, people seek entertainment, or a distraction or escape from their lives.  For example, when I watched this film, I wasn’t worrying about finals or work, I was too interested in the story I was watching.  Abbas Kiarostami wants us to realize that we are escaping from our own lives when we watch this film.  We may think that it is weird that the people in this film stopped reconstructing their lives to watch a soccer game, or that the director did not help a struggling family but instead looked at a beautiful landscape, but through this self-reflexivity, we realize that we are doing the same thing as these people.  It puts us on the same page as them and gives us an understanding of their motivations. The only difference within the film and us, is that Kiarostami emphasizes the idea that media and escape are necessary for survival.

Through Abbas Kiarostami’s use of framing, we can understand the idea that escape is necessary for survival in a postmodern society, and that media and television are a large part of that escape. Because of this, if a postmodern society lacks framing or structure, people become lost.  An example of this is in the film’s structure.  We can think of the plot of a film as the frame or structure of a film.  In this film, the plot becomes lost in the many setbacks the father and son have.  Without the plot, the film loses its drive and slows down.  Without this structure, the pair can never find the right road to get to their destination.  They become helpless in postmodern society because there is no structure guiding them.  With this, Kiarostami is saying that structure is required in postmodern society, or else people will become lost.

Kiarostami reinforces this idea through the natural disaster of an earthquake.  When the structure of homes and roads torn down, people become lost in the film.  With this lack of structure, the director and his son are unable to find a road that can get them to their destination.  In other words, without structure, the two become lost in this postmodern society.  This again is present with the people who are more directly effected by the earthquake.  They become lost without structure, and through that, search for structure.  Within that structure or frame they find escape.  

Abbas Kiarostami critiques postmodern society through the use of framing and structure in his film Life and Nothing More.  Through framing, it is apparent that escape is mandatory for survival.  Even after an earthquake, people must escape from their reality to survive in a postmodern society.  They seek structure, whether it is an empty doorway or the frame of a television.  Without structure, as seen with the plot and earthquake, people become lost.  Without a frame or structure to escape into, people will become lost in a postmodern society.