A meta-fiction centered on a director and a film crew shooting a scene (a wedding) in a village near Koker after the 1990 earthquake. The story focuses on Hossein, an actor playing the groom, and his real-life desire to marry the actress Touba; the film documents obstacles in their attempts and the crew’s involvement.
Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees is a film that builds a universe out of a single, simple question: What does it mean to say the wrong thing to someone over and over again?
On its surface, the plot is deceptively slight. In the earthquake-ravaged landscape of Northern Iran, a film crew (the same one from And Life Goes On...) is shooting a scene. A young, poor bricklayer named Hossein is cast opposite a young, literate woman named Tahereh. The problem? Hossein is desperately in love with Tahereh in real life, while she refuses to even acknowledge his existence, believing him to be beneath her social standing. Between takes, Hossein follows her, pleading his case in a relentless, circular, almost comical monologue. Through the olive trees- Abbas Kiarostami
But to describe the plot is to miss the magic entirely. Kiarostami is not making a romance; he is making a meditation on cinema, reality, and the chasm between human beings.
The narrative engine of the film is the off-screen, one-sided love affair between Hossein Rezai (playing himself) and Tahereh Ladanian (playing a role). Hossein is poor, speaks informally, and lives in a tent. Tahereh is educated, literate (she reads her lines from a script, while Hossein must memorize them), and comes from a family of landowners. A meta-fiction centered on a director and a
The tragedy of the earthquake is the backdrop; the foreground is the hilarious, agonizing, and ultimately transcendent pursuit by Hossein. He follows Tahereh through the rubble, badgering her with the same question: "Why won't you marry me?" He argues that his poverty is irrelevant, that she should look past material things, that he will treat her better than any wealthy man.
Tahereh, conversely, refuses to speak to him directly. When the director (playing a version of Kiarostami) calls "Cut," she retreats into stony silence. Her only line in the film that addresses Hossein personally is whispered so quietly that the crew cannot hear it. We, the audience, are left to guess what she says. On its surface, the plot is deceptively slight
This creates the film’s central tension: the conflict between cinematic reality and social reality. In the movie-within-the-movie, Hossein and Tahereh play a loving married couple. In the "real life" of the production, they are separated by a chasm of class and pride.