I find it also incredibly interesting in terms of the casting decisions that she went out into normal life and found random people that she could just feel that they embodied the parts that she wanted portrayed. It's just really unorthodox and amazing that one of the lead actor's maids ended up starring in the film and bringing that unique experience to the forefront. She did really seize the story and was electric in every scene she was in and I honestly wish there was more of her.

This is obviously speculation, but do you think that living in Syria and being a part of a rock band in a country in political turmoil just like Tunisia was part of the reason that LB went to him for help with the music?

I think this was well exemplified with the character of Farah's mother, in that at first she wanted her daughter to continue with business as usual (get a medical degree, stop making noise in the community), but this energy and her seeing the attempts to stifle it through the horrors of the prison helped her mom to ultimately realize the importance of what Farah was singing about. Did anyone else notice other times when adults in the movie were swayed by this raw energy?

The intervention of the United States in this passage reminded me of the strange powerlessness of the American journalists who despite normally being able to use the fact that they're American to get out of situations, their nationality actually made them a target for the government. Similarly, what once was an admiration for America in Egypt turned into the opposite, possibly fueled by the support for the Mubarak regime and said invasive policies by the American government. However, this is just my assumption. How do you feel that the American government through its actions would be received in Egypt, even though we are technically allies?

From what I remember from the Egyptian Arab Spring, there was no real plan after Mubarak was forced from power, as in no leadership to fill that void. The two candidates were Morsi, who was widely unpopular being from the Muslim Brotherhood, or a former Mubarak official. So voters were essentially shoehorned into choosing Morsi because what would be the point of going back to the regime you just overthrew? And a lot of the protests seen in the movie represent the frustrations on all three sides: the pro-army side feeling like they were never given a true candidate that would replace Mubarak, and the MB side feeling that they won an election and should have the right to lead the country based on that fact. There's also the third side which just tried to continue their lives after the fact but the residual effects from the crisis caused major problems to the economy and the tourism industry. This is more anecdotal than actual evidence, but I've been to Egypt twice in my life, both for large family reunions. There was a stark contrast from my visit to the Pyramids before the Spring, and after in the number of visitors.

It was ultimately an incredibly sad result to see that not only did Egypt's self-freeing of the Mubarak regime not improve the economy or their way of life, but now under Al-Sisi, who (being "elected" by 90+% of the "vote"), it has taken backwards steps further than Mubarak and further than most leaders the country has had in its history.

It did seem by the end of the film that one of the big flaws was the fact that they did just gloss over the massacre. One scene in particular was quite perplexing, in which one of the Israeli soldiers calls higher command and says "hey I heard there's a massacre going on", to which he gets a response of "Ok." However, it was interesting how nothing was done afterwards, in that the soldier treated it like he had just put in an order for a table and found out that it was sold out or something like that, instead of an actual massacre of civilians.

I honestly missed the first time that this was a false recollection, and now I realize something. Before, I thought the psychologist's explanation of falsified memory was very heavy-handed and was a tangent, but looking back and knowing this it was meant to place that doubt in your mind the whole way through, which I find to be very well done.

This is an interesting point that human rights are limited by their enforcer and who feels the social trauma, and that prosecution is really only done by those in power and how public that trauma is in the eyes of the world.

I really was thrown for a loop when Fuad turned from a resistance fighter who was willing to die for his country, to a sickly father with debilitating heart issues, which I think gets across the point of the old age and how it can come for all, including E.S.

I thought that part of the reason that it was subtitled this way was to highlight both physically and in the grand overview, Elia's silence. In each scene he is physically present, but yet he never really seems to react to his situation, just always present but not being able to do anything about it, a possible mirror for the ordinary citizens of the country.

It's interesting that this movie had the Suleimanian feel, because while watching this film it really reminded me of the way Wes Anderson directs his movies, from the setup of shots, to the strange ways the characters interact with each other.

This I feel is perfectly represented in West Beirut, as the conflict unfolds seemingly out of nowhere, and despite the citizenry getting along with each other for the most part, the "othering" of the conflict makes arbitrary religious differences articles of warfare. No one wins in this conflict, no one is right, the only result is death and destruction and the implosion of countless lives.

I may be misinterpreting this, but it sort of seems like this philosophy of cinema is in opposition to the one presented by Kiarostami, in that the audience is passive and the cinema must be the one to present ideas.

It's interesting that for a country that is involved with so much conflict, that their books and history is almost wiped of this conflict.

It's an interesting take that goes so contrary to how most people design film that to truly try to bring about a message of equality, one must instead simplify and create realism through everyday situations. He makes real critiques about society through realistic situations and using characters who are no more intrinsically spectacular than the audience members themselves.

So contrary to a lot of modern and western film, which I guess he wants to mean highly edited and controlled, Kiarostami is incredibly different in that he will leave numerous shots in the movie that might not mean anything, for the sake of normalizing the film for the audience, like the 1 minute scene at the end of the film where we witness the old windowmaker taking off his shoes and closing the windows. At the same time, as this essay points out, scenes like that have a danger of alienating an audience to the point where they question the whole point of the movie, if "everything is up to their enterpretation" and the filmmaker is essentially giving them the control.

So Kiarostami's use of both the failed actor and the children in his movies is I guess supposed to be a point about those misunderstood in society. In that by pretending to be a filmmaker, he acts somewhat outside the rules of the society: making money, getting a job. In turn, he and the children should be given more respect and consideration as they are able to expose these contradictions in the society, like how in Where is the Friend's House, Ahmadpoor's interactions with adults expose the weaknesses in their compulsion for discipline.