Deafening Silence

Abstract

In this concluding chapter, as I reach the limits of my analysis, I intend to analyze limits and margins. I have four different, though related, concepts of limits in mind. First, by focusing on a film by the Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, I address the limitations of the concept of national cinema that I defined in Chapter 1. Secondly, Ghobadi’s films speak from the margins of the Iranian scene; they even speak in a different language, Kurdish. Thirdly, beyond concerns of what constitutes belonging to a national cinema, more so than other filmmakers, Ghobadi directs us to the political and philosophical problems of “speaking for others” and whether the “subaltern can speak.” His Turtles Can Fly (2004) also tests the limits of the tolerable; it resists the dichotomy of limited, marginalized subjectivity versus disabling objectification of the excluded. Beneath and before this opposition of subject and object lies the intolerable abject. Finally, precisely because Ghobadi’s films are intentionally political, they require us to examine the limits of cinematic politics.