Abbas Kiarostami’s death yesterday was such a shock to me, perhaps even greater than that of David Bowie’s, for a variety of reasons. True, Bowie’s was utterly out of the blue, but partly due to the slightly delayed impact of his death due to uncertainty whether he had died (I regrettably thought his Facebook page had been hacked) and the almost improbable nature of his existence, I’m still shocked whenever I remind myself he’s dead. Kiarostami, on the other hand, is a much more quantifiable figure to me at present, but it almost feels as if his life was cut short more abruptly than Bowie’s; he was not allowed to make a grand, career-ending work the way that Bowie was. Regardless, what is more important to me at the moment is the difference in my perception of their work at the moment of the news of their passings respectively. For Bowie, I had listened to practically all of his work, finishing just in time for Blackstar, which I managed to listen to on the day of release, and Station to Station was already secure as my favorite album. But for Kiarostami, many factors collide. Close-Up is currently in my top 5 favorite films, but I’ve only seen it once, even before Letterboxd, so that part is slightly uncertain (though I have little doubt that I will love it just as much on rewatch). But I haven’t seen any of his other films, and though that shouldn’t bother me as much as it does right now, Kiarostami’s body of work was simply too staggering to ignore. He is one of the few directors to have 4 films on Rosenbaum’s top 100, Certified Copy is continuously cited as one of the best of the century, and so many of his films ring like monuments to my ears, and I feel as if I have failed someone, perhaps him or myself, by not seeing them before his death. I feel like I might prioritize seeing every (or almost every) film from each director too much, but I feel as if my marathon exercises allow me to see the best parts in every single film I see; a sense of continuty dominates.
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