Framing a Hybrid Tradition: Realism and Melodrama in About Elly

Abstract

Asghar Farhadi’s 2009 film Darbareye Elly/About Elly starts with a strip of light on a pitch-black screen. The small fissure of light at the top center of the screen is repeatedly obstructed, while the film’s credits appear in the lower left corner of the frame. The fissure then morphs into the light at the end of a tunnel, through which a group of friends are driving fast and shouting exuberantly, ahead of a weekend holiday by the Caspian Sea. The fissure of light, we later learn, is a money slot in a roadside charity box, into which Elly, the eponymous character of the film, inserts some bank notes in a bid to keep the group safe during their trip.1 Elly, however, goes missing in the sea early on the film, and never returns.KeywordsMoral JudgmentDeep FocusMoral LegibilityFilm FestivalCompositional MotivationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.