24 Frames

“24 Frames,” the final feature by Abbas Kiarostami, is as delightful as it is surprising. The surprises begin with the fact that the Iranian master’s last work is, of all things, essentially an animated film. Comprised of 24 short films, each lasting roughly four and a half minutes, the movie makes use of elaborate computer-generated imagery to temporally “extend” still images—one an Old Master painting, the others photographs taken by Kiarostami.

The project, which the director worked on for three years prior to his death in July 2016, began with his observation that paintings and photographs alike show us only a split second in time, leaving us to imagine what came before and after. “24 Frames” does some of that imagining for us, and genially invites our imaginary participation in doing so.

Very few of these mini-movies involve people, and there’s no standard dramatic action or dialogue (and thus no subtitles). Mostly, the images come from nature: we see birds, horses and other animals, in settings that range from seascapes to snowy mountainsides to quiet windowsills. The fact that there’s no usual storyline or characters, however, doesn’t mean there’s no narrative energy or appeal: each little movie seems to have its own dramatic arc, and part of the fun of watching it lies in seeing how each of these unfolds.

In one sense, “24 Frames” is a major filmmaker’s elaborate demonstration of the connection between still photography and cinema in his work. And as such, it may well come as a surprise to cinephiles who know Kiarostami primarily or only for the six dramatic features—from “Where Is the Friend’s House?” to “The Wind Will Carry Us”—that marked his emergence as one of the world’s most celebrated auteurs in the dozen years prior to the turn of the millennium.

But there were important stages to his career on either side of that period, and “24 Frames,” while serving as the capstone of the final stage, also connects back to Kiarostami’s beginnings as an artist and a filmmaker.

He started out studying art in university and worked in graphic design and as an illustrator of children’s books before being asked, in 1969, to head up a new filmmaking division at the government’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. There Kiarostami began his career as a filmmaker and, over the next decade and a half, made a number of shorts—some aimed at children, other using kids as subjects—that exemplified the oblique wit, allusiveness and observational acuity that later characterized his globally acclaimed features.

Beyond anticipating his full-length movies, though, Kiarostami’s shorts—little seen till now, and are being restored for release within the next two years—are remarkable accomplishments in themselves, and they demonstrate his ongoing commitment to the short form (one mirrored in his dedication, as a prolific poet, to haiku). In “24 Frames,” he in effect crafts a bounteous collection of shorts that seem designed to show how much expressiveness can be packed into four and a half minutes, as well how much cohesiveness can be rendered in the whole.

The film also connects to the eclectic spirit of the final, post-millennium phase of Kiarostami’s career. After ascending to cinema’s mountaintop, as it were, by winning countless prizes including the Palme d’Or at Cannes (for “Taste of Cherry,” 1997) and the Silver Lion at Venice (“The Wind Will Carry Us,” 1999), the filmmaker, seeming to chafe at the confines of being the great auteur of celluloid features from Iran, turned dramatically in numerous other creative directions. He embraced low-budget digital filmmaking and made features outside Iran as well as a number of documentaries and experimental films. He also created art installations, wrote poetry, taught classes in filmmaking around the world, and most notably, indulged his passion for nature photography.

These photographs, which beautifully frame the landscapes of Iran and other countries, seemed to represent two things to Kiarostami. They were a chance to craft contemplative images by himself, away from the scale, budgets and necessary collaborations of moviemaking. But they also were occasions to enjoy the silences and spiritual refreshments of nature. If stricter interpretations of Islam sometimes denounce such an attitude as pantheism, it was a quote-unquote heresy that seemed necessary to Kiarostami’s own approach to the divine.