A Reflection on the Category of Pure Language with a Comparative Study of Walter Benjamin's Thoughts and Abbas Kiarostami's Cinema

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Philosophy of Art, Faculty of Law, Theology and Political Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

2 Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Persian Language and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Iran.

10.22034/scart.2025.141232.1520

Abstract

Walter Benjamin considers pure language as an immediate matter for communication, and the intention of all languages ​​is to convey this pure and single language; something that each of them carries a part of, and linguistic pluralism is sometimes incapable of establishing communication. In such circumstances, the non-verbal aspects of communication become important. Benjamin even considers images to be preferable to words. Abbas Kiarostami, the author-filmmaker, has deeply explored the concepts of communication and language in his works. The effort to establish communication and mutual understanding is a prominent feature of his films, and his emphasis on images instead of dialogue is striking. This research seeks to answer the question of whether there is a relationship between Benjamin's views on language and Kiarostami's cinema. Therefore, it explains Benjamin's intellectual framework on language and its counterpart in Kiarostami's works. The aim of this study is to pay attention to the similarities in the language of Benjamin's ideas and Kiarostami's films and to find traces of them in his cinematic perspective. The research method in this study is descriptive-analytical and uses library resources. The result of the research indicates that Benjamin's concepts in the language are represented in Kiarostami's cinematic works. Kiarostami often emphasizes the importance of non-verbal aspects of language by using few dialogues and meaningful silences throughout his films; one of the clearest examples of this is the film Shirin, which is completely image-oriented and does not use words. This case and other cases are clearly consistent with Benjamin's theory of language. However, ultimately, examining these similarities does not confirm Kiarostami's definitive modeling of Benjamin and their existence could be a coincidence.

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