04/26/2002 Entry:
"Kiarostami quote"

I was reading an interview with Abbas Kiarostami when I came across this quote, which underscores much of what I have been feeling lately about film and music.

Mahdi: Western culture is so accustomed to background music, and there was an absence of any kind of soundtrack in this movie. Is this a practice you employ often in your films or just this one?

Kiarostami: Music is a perfect art by itself. It's very powerful and impressive. I dare not try to compete with music in my films. I can't engage in that kind of activity as the use of music has a great deal of emotional charge and burden and I do not want to place this on my spectator. Music plays on the spectators' emotions, make them excited or sad, and takes them through a veritable emotional roller coaster like ups and downs and I respect my spectator too much to do that.