10 on Ten

In this self-portrait of the artist in his natural habitat—the driver’s seat of a car—Kiarostami offers his teachings on movies and on what he makes, which may be something else altogether. Taking his 2002 film Ten, shot with a stationary video camera on the dashboard of a car, as a case in point, he dissects his approach to filmmaking throughout his oeuvre. He has a lesson plan: the film is cannily divided into ten topics—The Camera, The Subject, The Script, The Location, The Music, The Actor, The Setting, The Accessories, The Director, and the mysterious Last Lesson. And when you think about it, Kiarostami has a very idiosyncratic approach to nine out of ten of these things—idiosyncratic, but not without theoretical and philosophical basis. 10 on Ten opens up the artist’s philosophy while staying closed, and tightly framed, in a car.