are traces of hope for nothing in the New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, but over time, the concept has taken a more sophisticated and philosophical form in cinematic productions. This is both visible in art-house and in popular movies. The aesthetics of hope for heech, a shared value among filmmakers and filmgoers in the context of Iranian cinema has been represented in various ways, such as an infatuation with an impossible love and a thirst for union, death awareness, and even celebrating the end of life. In acknowledging the absurdity of life and the uncertainties surrounding humanity’s state of being.
In films such as Separation (2011, dir. Asghar Farhadi), Certified Copy (2010, dir. Abbas Kiarostami), Just 6.5 (Metri Shehsh o Nim, 2019, dir. Saeed Rustayi), African Violet (2019, dir. Mona Zandi Haghighi), Verdict (2005, dir. Masud Kimiai), and The Love-Stricken, an impossible or inconclusive love is portrayed. Separation pictures a world of divisions, separations, distinctions, and even connections that set borders between people. Farhadi masterfully challenges the juxtaposition of binary oppositions such as modernity vs. tradition, honesty vs. dishonesty, and secular mind-sets vs. religious attitudes. One of the least noticed binary oppositions that is represented in the film is love vs. lack of love. Simin and Nader are going to get separated as their paths get divided. But when Nader’s life becomes complicated and he gets arrested, the couple are temporarily reunited. It is a brief reunion that will shatter their daughter’s hopes for their reunion. The hope for heech in this film is a bittersweet one for audiences as well.
The Persian title of the film is Jodai-ye Nader az Simin, or Separation of Nader from Simin. The inclusion of the couple’s names in the Persian title is significant because the title of many romantic stories in Persian literature includes the names of characters. Nezami Ganjavi’s masterpieces such as Khosrow and Shirin, Leyli and Majnun, and Ferdowsi’s Rostam and Tahmineh, Siyavash and Farangis, and Gorgani’s classical romance, Vis and Ramin are examples of such stories. Stories that bear the romantic couple’s names in Persian have a particular appeal for audiences. Sweet moments of lovemaking in such stories are combined with disappointing instances of separation. Most romantic stories in Persian literature end unhappily or inconclusively. Iranian readers of classical literature know from the very beginning that they are likely not going to be rewarded with a happy ending, yet these stories are the most beloved in Iranian culture. Separation of Nader from Simin is a modern, and more pessimistic version of such stories. It bears the term “separation” in the title. The audience, right from its beginning, knows that this is a story of separation, not (re)union. The narrative does not describe the beginning of the romance either. In other words, it starts in media res (in the midst of the story), that depicts the bitter part of their relationship. Separation is the story of the termination of love. The spectators’ hope for heech is fulfilled by the raising of questions about the nature of love and affection between people. It shows how love can be transformed with changes in social and personal circumstances in the modern era.
In a similar way, the temporary union of Elle/she and an art scholar in Certified Copy portrays an ambiguous and inconclusive love. In a sequence in the film, the scholar, who could be seen as Kiarostami’s alter ego, questions the permanency of love in a relationship. He quotes the translation of a part of a poem by M. Omid—“the garden of leaflessness, who dares to say that it isn’t beautiful?”—implying the parallel elegance between the end of love and the blooming of love. Certified Copy crushes any hopes for understanding even the nature of love between the two characters. The beautiful scenery of Tuscany, a handsome couple drinking wine, driving and walking together, and a sophisticated and thought-provoking discussion between them is all the viewers get. As in other films by Kiarostami, the fragmented moments of happiness remind us that life and love are transitory; wholeness is only achieved in understanding nothingness.
In African Violet, when an ailing ex-husband is abandoned in a nursing home, the ex-wife decides to bring him to her home with her new partner. The three of them find new connections that are reminiscent of their bittersweet past lives and the ironic and mystifying affections that they have had for one another. The tragic, painful, and impossible love of a daring woman for two men is portrayed in a poetic mise-en-scene that is the hallmark of Iranian art-house cinema. African Violet is a celebration of colors, dreams, affections, and resoluteness, but also of the indeterminacies of a woman who finds love and lack of love in both of her marriages. The ailing man feels rejuvenated in his ex-wife’s company, but his son takes him back to the nursing home, where he dies in despair. The woman gains not only joy, but also pain in her acts of kindness throughout the narrative. The aesthetics of a hope for heech creates a lyrical cinematic experience for spectators.
As in many other social realist films, the movie Just 6.5 represents the impossible love, which makes social failures and shortcomings even more painful for its characters. In Just 6.5, a drug lord, waiting to be executed, is absurdly in love with a woman who had abandoned him and later disclosed his name to the cops.
Hope for nothing is well-represented in movies that examine mortality, as well. In Verdict the crime lord Reza Ma’rufi, ponders the insignificance or heechness of life:
When I was young, Sadeq Hedayat told me something that’s still lingering in my mind. He said: “everyone has a great asset, which is taking their life. If you feel blue … if you are lonely … if no one comes to see you … go for your asset.”
In the last sequence of Verdict, a gang member, madly in love with his disenchanted girlfriend, sets a plot to be killed by the person he loves the most. In his last words to her, he says: “I liked to be killed by your verdict, by love’s verdict.” Both of these characters were infatuated with gaining more impact in the gang hierarchy, yet both seem to be constantly thinking about death, as an inevitable part of their lives. Life and death in this film and many other Iranian films are represented in the same ken. Death is not the end of life; it is the continuity of life.
Pondering death, and by extension, life, is one of the most recurrent topics of Iranian films. It is also directly connected with the aesthetics of hope for nothing. Generally speaking, awareness of death and being mindful of the fleeting state of being are among the pillars of Persian culture. The terms inshallah (God willing), and agar ghesmat basheh (if fate would have it) are common parlance. In classical literature (such as Rumi’s and Khayyam’s poetry) and modern literature (as in Sadeq Hedayat’s and Shahrnoush Parsipour’s fictional works and Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry) life and death are constantly positioned side by side. The transitory situation of life, of happy or wonderful moments, are constantly communicated to readers of Persian literature. The philosophy of seizing the moment and being mindful of the present time, as best represented in Khayyam’s poetry and some fictional works by Hedayat, have roots in this deep-seated cultural awareness of death. Films such as Taste of Cherry (1999, dir. Abbas Kiarostami), The Wind Will Cary Us (2000, dir. Abbas Kiarostami), At Five in the Afternoon (2005, dir. Samira Makhmalbaf), About Elly (2009, dir. Asghar Farhadi), and Dance with me (2019, dir. Soroush Sehat) are only a handful of films that depict death as an extension of life.
No other Iranian filmmaker has explored the question of death and embracing nothingness more deeply than Abbas Kiarostami. Death is the most visible topic in at least two films by Kiarostami. In Taste of Cherry, death and reaching the point of nothingness is portrayed as a simple reality of life. The narrative follows a driver on the outskirts of Tehran in search of someone to aid in his burial after he commits suicide. In this film, ending one’s life is not portrayed as depressing or horrible, but as a (liberating) choice for an individual in search of the meaning of life. The driver encounters three individuals in his quest. An immature soldier who is shying away from facing contradictory questions about life and death, a middle-aged seminarian who is dead-certain about the impiety associated with committing suicide, and an old free-spirited man who had already pondered the possibility of ending his own life, yet decided that life has much more to offer. The old man believes that it would be a shame to give up observing the sunrise and
