Have only seen Ten and now I’m about ten (heh) minutes into Certified Copy, but it is clear Kiarostami enjoys exploring the mother-son tête-à-tête dynamic.
The way the dueling dialogue between his characters plays out is so exhausting because it feels so true; it’s bickering I’ve witnessed between my nephews and my sister, my cousin and his mother, strangers at hair salons, the grocery store, lobbies in car rental agencies; those “Mom, can I go on the computer?” “No, we’re going to leave right now.” “But you’re on the phone!” “The computer is going to take forever to turn on, it’s not going to be worth it. NO.” “Maaaaaan.” exchanges.
I appreciate Kiarostami’s ability to capture not only the exasperation involved in the banal arguments between impudent little boys who want to point out what they may consider “silly” aspects about their mothers and the mothers who are game to put their pugnacious kid in check, but also the effect it has on the spectator.
In both film’s cases, the spectator identifies with the mother, perhaps because the women in both films are the protagonists, but it seems the spectator is more likely to relate to the irritation on the mother’s behalf because, fuck, you want the kid to shut up.
I wonder how a young boy would respond to these mother-son scenes. Would they view the boy as an avatar and relate more with him or would they squirm out of familiarity and see things from the mother’s POV? Perhaps I’ll test it out on my nephews sometime.
The son in Certified Copy comes across as more playful, it’s having a prying question for each of Mom’s responses just for the hell of it, it’s more of an elbow nudge, “Oh, Mom, I’m just pulling your leg” sort of relationship. In the small amount of time I’ve watched this mother and son, it looks like impudence out of pre-adolescent boredom or like a young boy teasing his mother for her apparent obsession with an author, and perhaps he is employing this method to understand her a bit more because being direct about it might be too mushy for someone who likes to keep his distance by carrying on a conversation hiding behind a handheld game (what the hell is he playing with? Is it a cell phone or—what is that?) and a bushy mane.
Setting plays a large part in how these conversations are received as well. In Ten, the conversation takes place inside the fixed space of a car, which becomes suffocating after several minutes whereas, in Certified Copy, the setting is a more open and breathable restaurant space.
The son in Ten was a lot more harsh. If I recall correctly, he was criticizing his mother’s independence—an independence emphasized by the autonomy present in driving—which is not uncommon in a culture that does not wholeheartedly support women’s freedom. He sided with the male authority of his father, was bitter and combative toward his mother, laying all the blame on her for getting a divorce without considering that his father was also to be held accountable for the split. There may have been a few of those moments when you’re arguing and you experience a delay and really ‘hear yourself’ say something and laugh about it, realizing how dumb it is to be arguing about whatever, but I don’t remember their relationship being jocular.
And maybe that’s what made the ping pong interchange between the mother and son in Certified Copy more tolerable and amusing, because it didn’t play out as an attack.
