Abbas Kiarostami is a director that aims to portray life as art, to connect life to nature and examine how insignificant human actions and lives are when compared to the world around us. His pastoral approach is one that not adds beauty to his films but also allows the viewer to personally see the connection between nature and the individual. Through the Olive Trees, takes place right after the 1990 Manjil-Rudbar earthquake, which killed almost 40,000 people, left 500,000 homeless and many without any knowledge of whether their loved ones were alive or dead. Abbas choice to portray this event through his film deals largely with his deep connection to nature, as well as trauma and repetition. Abbas has a track record of incorporating the repetition of past traumas and loss through his films, which I believe is also present in Through the Olive Trees. Mohammed Ali Keshavaz, who plays the director, is shown repeatedly asking the women in the film their address. Even though almost all of them have lost their homes and no longer have address’. He also makes them name the people they’ve lost in the earthquake. The director believes having them talk about their losses will force them to recover, and so he refuses to let them ignore what has happened.

Another interesting dynamic to this film is Abbas choice to have a film within a film. Initially I thought of it to be an interesting twist on the narrative but after analyzing the film more closely I’ve come to see it, as Abbas desire to escape reality. Abbas choice to intertwine reality and fiction appears to be his way of creating a means to escape the issues occurring without fully losing reality. Abbas choice to create a film-within-a-film also creates slight tension between that of the actual film. There are times when we are following one developing narrative and then all of a sudden we’ll be presented with information from the past. This switch between past and present and film and film-within-film at times had me questioning what was reality and what was fiction. Which is what I believe Abbas was trying to create through this back and forth pattern.

One part of this film that particularly resonated with me was that of the ‘male gaze’. As a female I found it interesting to see the ways in which Tahareh and the other young women in the film were featured. There were never any shots of them looking into the camera or at the male actors. Their gaze was often hidden or they were shown not returning the gaze of others. This component of the film was what conveyed the distinct cultural differences in Through the Olive Trees and other films we’ve watched. In many other films the camera has a way of sexualizing women, of making them into objects of visual pleasure instead of characters of value. However, Through the Olive Trees was a film that instead completely dismissed the female gaze.  Which not only presented cultural value but also showcased the control of censorship in Iranian cinema.

The way we interpret what we see, hear, and experience relies heavily on a person’s point of view. One person’s interpretation of something is likely to be completely different than that of another. In the case of cinema, a person’s point of view plays a large role in their interpretation of what they are viewing. For example, in horror movies something that is scary to me, very well may be comical to someone else. Peeping Tom’s storyline follows one man, named Mark, through his murder of three different women. From simply hearing the summary of the film, it’d be easy to assume any viewer would empathize solely with the three female victims. Although after watching the film I feel I also have a slight tinge of empathy for Mark as well. Which is what makes point of view such an important aspect in the interpretation of film. A male viewer may find himself angry at Mark for treating women so poorly, while another may feel excitement in Mark’s kills. A female viewer potentially may feel scared by the situation and strongly dislike Mark for putting those women in such a situation. The plethora of feelings and interpretations from the film are endless, and ultimately depend on the person watching.

I feel Michael Powell strategically develops his narrative in a way that is supposed to leave us feeling a bit sorry for Mark. Throughout the entire film we watch Mark kill these women without a set motive. The mystery of the movie comes not from who is doing the killing but instead from why the killing is being done. The three women seem to share no real connection; beside that in all three murder’s Mark films their deaths. It isn’t until the end of the film though that we discover Mark’s motives for both filming and murdering these women. In each of his kills, the last thing the viewer is left with is an image of the fear in the victims face. Which largely depicts why Mark kills these women, he wants them to watch the fear on their face while being killed. This inhumane act Mark preforms is driven from his childhood. We discover at the end of the film that Mark’s father had conducted a series of tests on him as a child all dealing with fear. He would film Mark while conducting acts that were intended to scare him. These actions are in turn what stirred Mark to act in the way that he did. He had been conditioned from a young age that evoking fear in others was a normal.

It isn’t until the end of the film though that we are presented with this information, and upon realizing his motives I suddenly felt my feelings of distaste and hatred toward Mark turn to those of empathy. His previous actions were in no way validated in my mind but my point of view on the situation had greatly shifted. Case and point of how much of an impact point of view has on the way we interpret a situation. I’m sure for many other viewers the discovery of Mark’s past did little but solve their confusion of his motives. However, Powell does an excellent job framing the narrative in a way that keeps the viewer interested up until the very end. He also leaves the interpretation of Mark and his actions up to the individual watching; and although he attempts to create a sense of empathy towards Mark in the end, the rest of the film is set in such a manner that feeling no empathy for him at all would also be a completely normal response. Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with Powell’s development of the narrative and in his development of Mark’s character.