Throughout Abbas Kiarostami’s career he sought emotional and spiritual truths by investigating the cinema on a technical level; dissecting, rearranging, and deconstructing its various technical and philosophical machinations. Ten (2002) certainly takes this experimental approach, restricting the cinematic to open up performances by restricting shooting conditions to two static digital cameras mounted on a taxi. Kiarostami would then, two years later, revisit those conditions in order to make a video record of himself as a filmmaker in 10 On Ten (2004).
When the camera isn’t fixed on Kiarostami as he drives, he’s either directing the camera out of the window or he has cut to a scene from Ten. This limits 10 On Ten to three kinds of shots, and yet Kiarostami close-ups on himself driving, espousing his cinematic philosophies, is oddly liberating and enlightening. The position of the camera on the dashboard, but its proximity to the subject creates a sort of “fantastique” intimacy. The audience is close to Kiarostami from an impossible physical position.
As far as cinematic portraiture goes, Kiarostami has found the perfect subject in himself. 10 On Ten isn’t the exercise of an egotist, it’s the quiet, whispered secrets of a friend. Kiarostami discusses his methods and motivations at length, unpretentiously, as if he were being held accountable by a bewildered audience member who had just left a screening of one of his films.
Personally, I have found 10 On Ten to be a valuable teaching tool. In 2004 it wasn’t exactly common to train a camera upon one’s self like it is almost twenty years later. Students find Kiarostami’s approach, for that reason, very accessible and familiar. They also find him as a filmmaker engaging in a self reflective monologue profoundly inspiring and instructional. 10 On Ten isn’t necessarily the best place to start investigating Kiarostami’s body of work, but it is an essential document to those familiar with his output.
