Five
( Panj )

Abbas Kiarostami
2004 - 74 min - Couleur - Iran, France

A beach with an old piece of dry wood, washed by the waves. The driftwood breaks from the sand and splits into two separate parts: one stays on the beach, the other vanishes behind the waves, surfaces again briefly, is finally carried out to sea and vanishes. The stories told by Abbas Kiarostami in the five shots of "Five" are all unspectacular miniatures. But on their miniature scale they deal meticulously with a theme that becomes universal in the film – how something is set in motion, emerges, passes and disappears.
This happens in "Five" not only with a piece of wood in the sand but also with people strolling past the camera on a beach promenade, or with ducks that waddle quacking across the screen, as if they wanted to parody the whole of humanity. The scene of Kiarostami’s miniature narratives is the sea. At first it can be clearly recognized in the picture; but later it is visibly transformed into an abstract surface by a slow fade-out in white, accompanied by the swishing of the waves.
In the last shot filmed at night the viewer can only guess that the sea is present. Even the swishing is no longer audible; instead the cry of an animal can be heard, rhythmically breaking out and ebbing away again. It is probably the rhythm of the waves and sounds that forms the basis of Kiarostami’s lyrical film Five.
In it his stories of emergence and growing, of the disappearance and passing of things, are shaped into an intense, sensuous experience.