In 1960, a young James Ivory packed his camera and visited Afghanistan with the intention of making a short travel documentary. Over half a century later he creates an erudite film essay largely about James Ivory, in which which Proust, EM Forster, and the unfinished memoirs of 16th-century Mughal emperor Babur converge with the evocative footage he brought home with him. Ivory’s recall is as sharp as the faded 16mm film is timeworn, its poor resolution and grain providing a ghostly remembrance of an Afghanistan pushing towards liberal modernization, which Ivory’s hosts in Kabul wished to promote, at times literally cupping their hands over his lens whenever the young filmmaker’s eye wandered towards sights they wanted to conceal from the world. At the time, America and the USSR both vied for Afghanistan’s favour, and we all know how that ended. (In the film’s opening minutes, Ivory casually mentions that he roomed inside a “nest of CIA spies” and that his trip was financed with “Rockefeller money.”) Nine months later, Ivory returns to New York and meets Ismail Merchant, whereupon A Cooler Climate ends, artfully becoming both a prologue and an afterword to an epic career. 

Stir, September 2023