Still Life (1974) User Reviews

Still life

[mohammedsverdolov · 8/10 · 17 April 2021]

I really didn't know whether the actors were really actors or an old railway cross guard and his old wife.. they weren't acting or pretending..they seemed that they were living their real everyday life beside the scenes all looked like a still life painting.

The Measure of Progress

[Martin-117 · 10/10 · 1 July 2002]

A stark, minimalist study of the disposability of the individual in the industrial age. De-dramatised to focus on only the absolutely essential, the film shows an existence defined by a railway track, which is the source of sustenance, but at the same time the cause of virtual exile to the monotonous alienation of being responsible for one single routinised function. It is almost the only link to the outside world, yet it has isolated the individual from any kind of organic link with natural production or broader humanity.

A restrained, quiet film, in which nothing is touched up or beautified, that will reward the patient viewer.

Definitely the best Iranian film ever

[hooshi36_1999 · 10/10 · 22 May 2001]

In par with the best Italian Neo-realist Masterpieces, this haunting film is a Chekovian tale of the wasted lives of a railway line-worker and his wife. The pace, the directing and the actings are so good that

it will stay to haunt you for a long time, probably forever, once you have watched it. A masterpiece by any definition.

Bleakly memorable film that provides food for thought on the purpose and direction of life

[bob the moo · 23 May 2005]

Mohamad Sardari has served for over thirty years in his remote railway crossing station. Dutifully he has lowered and raised the crossing guard each time a train has come by. In his small home his wife sits and makes rugs from sunrise to sunset; his son has long since left to join the military. With minimal contact with the outside world, Mohamad has long since settled into his quiet, uneventful life – a life that he sees no reason should ever change, nor does he desire it to do so.

Whether or not this is the brilliant film that many viewers proclaim it to be is a thing I'm unsure of but, regardless of that praise, it is certainly a memorable one that achieves a very strong sense of the remoteness and ultimate pointlessness of some lives. If you haven't already guessed yet, this is not a cheerful feel-good movie to take that girl who keeps smiling at you to for your first date. Instead this is a slow, patient film that has long periods of nothingness punctuated by sudden moments of, well, comparative inactivity. Despite this though it manages to be surprisingly engaging because it is well observed and interesting – that sounds contradictory but you need to see the film to understand it.

The railway line stands as Mohamad's thin connection to a life that he has never explored – one of other people, experiences and interaction; his life is empty and isolated and it is easy to relate to that sort of existence. Perhaps not physically (few of us have that amount of space or silence), or even in terms of diary entries (many of us can easily keep busy) but perhaps in terms of emotion. As Mohamad empties the only home he has known for decades, you do have to wonder what the point of it all was – a thought that stayed with me as I drove to work the next day, a job I enjoy but ultimately doesn't define "me" or my meaning any more than the reviews I write here, the way I spend my weekends or anything other one thing that is fleeting in the longer term. It is not really depressing because, for all its emptiness it is thought provoking and interesting. The character of Mohamad is hard to relate to but his sense of loss at times is tangible and it was easy to go along with him to the point where I was engaged in his story. Bonyadi's performance is one of understatement, patience and understanding. Saless' direction is impressive, setting the empty tone well but also providing plenty of lingering interesting shots that add to the memorable quality of the whole film.

Well worth seeing, although you should be aware of how far removed it is from the MTV-edited, action movies that are served up as an increasingly large portion of our cinematic diet (in terms of what is on offer at multiplexes – more screens, less choice). It is a bleak and empty film that has remoteness and isolation running all through it; it engaged my interest and brain equally and I imagine it will stay with me for quite some time to come.

An old man has reached the retirement age but doesn't want to get retired. That's pretty much all that happens in the film.

[artabarzangi · 10/10 · 10 June 2016]

Much like other Shahid Saless movies, there is not much story going on: An old man has reached the retirement age but doesn't want to get retired. That's pretty much all that happens in the film. Saless doesn't explain much; neither does he dramatize any situation. Simple actions like eating dinner or walking to another side of the room are shown in real time and in detail. This details in addition to on-scene sound recording and using non-actors gives his film a naturalistic quality in addition to realism Shahid Saless' expressive use of color and limited color pallet is a strong characteristic of his works from his very first color film. In Still Life the color pallet is mostly limited to grey, blue, black and brown. Inner walls of the small cottage are pale blue (tending to brown), the old woman wears a blue dress close to the color of the walls and the man wears a grey suit similar to grey of the sky in the film. These choices have been made very carefully and contribute to harmony of colors in the film; the woman never leaves the cottage and wears the same color as walls while the man's clothes (who goes outside regularly) match with the grey sky and overall greyness of the film. In fact grey is so dominant in this film that it's as if it has been bathed in grey! Every other color is pale and washed out, whether it's the yellow of the outer walls of the cottage or the green of the grass around it. This harmony lets the couple merge with their backgrounds (the sky or walls of the cottage), emphasizing their boring, and eventless lives and making them a part of the "still life" around them. Their son, a soldier on the duty, comes to their place for one night. His clothes and bag are brighter and bolder than those of his parents and contrast with the pale harmony of his parents and their faded lives, showing that he has more life inside. The only actual bright color that we ever see in the old man's place is for an orange that doesn't last long; it quickly gets pealed! In the last quarter of the film, the old man goes to city to see "the boss" (as he puts it) and discuss his retirement with him. When he gets to his office, for the first time in the movie, we see real bright colors, we see clear windows with light getting through them, we see two men talking and laughing the whole time that the old man is there. This is a huge contrast to all we had seen so far; to all the dark and pale colors, all the blurry and unclear windows and all the stillness and silence. As a part of Saless' dehumanization of his characters, we practically get no close-ups of the people in the film. The shot order is unique; we go from long shot (extreme long shots in exteriors) to medium shot and then back to long shot again. This deliberate distance prevents us from emotionally engaging with the characters and sympathizing with them. It shows their solitude and makes their motionless bodies look like objects. On the contrary, we get several close-ups from objects! The only close-up that we ever get from a human is the old man's picture in the mirror in the final shot of the film, which again is technically a close-up of an object, only one that happens to reflect the old man's image To further restrain the visual energy of the already "dead" images of the film, most of the interior medium shots are symmetric, eliminating all dynamism and making sure that shots are completely static. As a matter of fact, there is no camera movement in the film at all, the characters walk very slowly and every prop is static as well. Probably the most (perhaps the only!) dynamic thing in the film is the train. In addition to being literally moving and dynamic, it's figuratively the only dynamic of the old man's life, it's the only "living" part of his otherwise completely lifeless life! It seems to be his only concern in life, even when he goes home the only thing that he talks about is the track being washed away by flood. Maybe the final shot of the movie (his reflection on the mirror) suggests his full conversion into "still life", into an object: his symbolic death.

Stark and absorbing examination of social alienation

[Capo-idFilm · 24 September 2010]

Stark and absorbing minimalist examination of alienation and the daily ritual of working life. It works on both a literal and symbolic level: its unfurnished aesthetic grounds its subject matter in a sparse, gruelling existence wherein the railway track brings both daily sustenance and contact from the wider region; but there is a point at which the narrative casually, unexpectedly folds back on itself, makes us aware of a continuity error, of a flashback after the fact, so that time itself becomes the subject of the camera's observant gaze (another moment sees a conversation repeated from earlier drowned out by the sound of a ticking clock). Quiet and demanding, but devastating by its end.

Join idFilm: idfilm.proboards.com

Read idFilm: idfilm.blogspot.com