NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (July 2019): Criterion have transferred Abbas Kiarostami's And Life Goes On to Blu-ray as part of their 3-disc Koker Trilogy Blu-ray set that also includes Where Is My Friend's House? and Through the Olive Trees. It is advertised as a "New 2K digital restoration". It looks very film-like with plenty of consistent texture and not showing the damage in segments of Where Is My Friend's Home?. The image only has one brief instance of inconsistency but is generally clean, tight with good colors and wonderful grain. Criterion have transferred to a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate.

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the original Farsi language. It is flat but dialogue is clear and consistent. There is some unidentified classical music used sparingly. Criterion offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' / 'B' Blu-ray (depending on what region you buy it in.)

We get a wonderful new audio commentary featuring Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, coauthors of Abbas Kiarostami: Expanded Second Edition (Contemporary Film Directors) Second Edition, Expanded Edition. They discuss how Kiarostami did not consider this part of a trilogy. Jonathan brings up the didactic (point of view) shots, how Kiarostami has mentioned reference to Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, and Mehrnaz talks about how the director's previous film influences his current film among many other topics. There is much more about Kiarostami's style. It is excellent - filled with valuable analysis. We also get Abbas Kiarostami: Truths and Dreams, a 53-minute 1994 documentary by Jean-Pierre Limosin. It was broadcast as the November 28,1994, episode of the French television show Cinema, de noire temps and features footage of Abbas Kiarostami returning to the Koker region, and it chronicles the director's career to that point. There is also a new 1/4 hour interview with scholar Hamid Naficy author of the multivolume A Social History of Iranian Cinema, who discusses director Abbas Kiarostami's influences and his importance to the rise of what has come to be known as the "New Iranian Cinema". The Koker Trilogy Blu-ray package has a liner notes booklet with an essay by Cheshire.

Criterion's description is, again, appropriate: "Abbas Kiarostami first came to international attention for this wondrous, slyly self-referential series of films set in the rural northern-Iranian town of Koker. Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker Trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and the playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility. With each successive film, Kiarostami takes us deeper into the behind-the-scenes “reality” of the film that preceded it, heightening our understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life."

And Life Goes On is another window into a unique visual storyteller and the included commentary has immense value. This is an important Blu-ray collection for any Cinephile or world-cinema fan. Another very strong recommendation. 

Gary Tooze