A photograph of Abbas Kiarostami in Hamid Dabashi's book shows him crouching over a frying pan that has two eggs in it. Beside him, and like him focused on the eggs, is the original movie camera invented by Lumière. The photograph was taken during the shooting of Lumière et compagnie, a film which, on the 100th anniversary of Lumière's invention, enlisted film-makers from all over the world to make one-minute shorts using the original camera. Kiarostami made the best one. On the screen, against the dark background of the frying pan, we see the butter melting and bubbling and the eggs being dropped in one at a time, one of the yolks breaking and spreading - fried eggs, sunny-side up, taking shape in close-up before our eyes. Isolated and enlarged, the two eggs cooking over an unseen fire appear mysteriously primal, a microcosm of organic matter evolving in the dark. The eggs done, the frying pan is swiftly removed from the heat, and the unmoving camera lingers for an extra moment on the clean, metallic burner, now extinguished. The organic has suddenly given way to the mechanical.

LRB 27 June 2002 | PDF Download