Recognition and Analyzing of the Film Body in Abbas Kiarostami’s Cinema from the View of Vivian Sobchack’s Film Phenomenology

In the wake of anthropocentric thinking of Descartes, human and the world surrounding him or her, divided into two separate component. Highlighting the optic phase of contemporary environment, this separation become more obvious. Lots of phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty try removing this separation, he considers the body as a primary factor in defining space. A phenomenological approach to the cinematic experience focuses neither solely on the formal and narrative features of the film itself, nor solely on the Spectator’s psychic identification with characters or cognitive interpretation of the film. Instead, phenomenological film analysis approaches the film and the viewer as acting together, correlationally, along an axis that would itself constitute the object of study. Phenomenological approaches to film are useful in that, rather than strictly opposing approaches based on optical vision, distance, and ‘the gaze’, they complement existing theories. From a phenomenological perspective, it is the body with its expressive and perceptive qualities that constitutes the necessary condition for looking, identification, emotions, and pleasure. Film phenomenology has appeared again in two approaches after a long gap that has been set through beginning semiology in film studies, the first approach is relied on Husserl’s phenomenology and the second is relied on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and his embodiment perception. We follow the second approach in this paper and focuse on Vivian Sobchak’s theories that is abstracted and relied on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. In Sobchak’s theory a film is experienced and understood for what it is: a visible and centered visual activity coming into being in significant relation to the objects, the world, and the others it intentionally takes up and expresses in embodied vision. Sobchack established his studies based on three model that helps us in figuring out the body of film. Our purpose in this paper is recognizing and analyzing the film body in Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema. This research has a qualitative approach and with the philosophical framework of phenomenology beside that, help of the research model abstracted from theoretical foundations tries to recognize and analyze film body and embodiment perception of it in Kiarostami’s cinema. On the whole, the research showed that the film body in Kiarostami’s cinema is so similar to human body in perceiving and expressing the surrounded environment. As Kiarostami’s ideology and theory in minimalizing and even eliminating any unnecessary objects from his films, he tries to eliminate any unnecessary objects in fusion of film and human body. As we have reached in the third model of Vivian Sobchak’s theories about film body, the camera and the hermeneutic opaque relation of human body is so essential in analyzing and recognizing film body. Our research shows that the third model is the best model for analyzing the film body in Kiarostami’s cinema. As we have pointed out the body of film in his cinema acts like the human body and the fusion of them is undeniable. The subjective angle of his camera and multi sensational space of his movies are vital component in fusion of film and human body.