The Wind Will Carry Us

 

The Wind Will Carry Us

1999

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Starring: Behzad Dorani

I can’t help myself – the more I see Kiarostami’s work, the more I’m fascinated by it.  Part of me doesn’t really understand why.  The latest of his I’ve seen, The Wind Will Carry Us is, on the surface, frustratingly meandering, with no clear sense of purpose – or, for that matter, narrative.  Usually that sort of movie drives me nuts.  But my goodness, take a moment to peel back the outer layer, and suddenly this new world opens before your eyes, one with meaning and poignancy and symbolism and, well, just so much more to offer than simple “plot.”

The story – which is not the focus of the film, to be very clear – is about a man from the city (Dorani) who comes with a small crew to a small village in the country.  His purpose there is a bit of a mystery, and he tells everyone he is an engineer.  He befriends a small boy and keeps asking him questions about the boy’s dying grandmother.  He keeps getting cell phone calls, but has to drive his Jeep up the side of a hill in order to answer the call.  He drinks tea, borrows milk, chats with his neighbor, enjoys the hospitality of the townspeople… and, well, that’s about it.

Usually films like this infuriate me.  Nothing happens.  If anyone reading this is stunned by my enjoyment of such a film, trust me, I’m a little in shock myself.  But with Kiarostami, he does it in such a way as to draw me in, to hypnotize me, to get me thinking about, well, lots of stuff.

Gabbeh

Gabbeh
1996
Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Starring: Shaghayeh Djodat, Abbas Sayah

An old couple stop at a spring to wash their gabbeh, or woven rug. Magically, a young woman (Djodat) seems to spring from the gabbeh, pronouncing her name to be Gabbeh. She tells the old couple the story depicted on the rug, which is also the story of how she ran away from her clan with her lover. Her father is perpetually making her wait to marry her lover, a man who is never seen close up but instead communicates through the cry of the wolf, and eventually, Gabbeh must break free of her clan. The old couple both listen to and participate in her story.

There is certainly a simple lyricism in this film. Makhmalbaf gracefully shows us a wheat field blowing in the wind, then cuts to a shot of women weaving a gabbeh, then back to a rippling stream. It has been called poetic, and I find that to be an apt description. While the story is more or less straightforward, Makhmalbaf intercuts cleverly, going from a shot of yellow flowers to one of making yellow dye, to yellow yarn, to a yellow canary. When Gabbeh’s mother is giving birth, we see instead a hen laying an egg. When Gabbeh finally decides to run away with her suitor, we mainly see a baby goat standing on its legs for the very first time. There is constant association of man with nature, and the sounds of nature underline nearly every scene.

Kandahar

Kandahar
2001
Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Starring: Nelofer Pazira, Hassan Tantai

A woman (Pazira), Nafas, travels from Iran to Afghanistan in order to rescue her sister. Her sister has written to tell her that she plans to commit suicide at the final eclipse of the century, so Nafas must hurry to Kandahar. Along the way she is escorted by local families and children, landmine victims, expatriates, and more.

Kandahar is, if nothing else, a peek behind the deeply veiled wall of an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban. As Westerners, this is not a world we are exposed to often, not even on Dateline. This is a story of that world told through an inhabitant - of sorts. Nafas and her family were raised in Afghanistan but fled to Canada, accidentally leaving behind the suicidal sister who drives the plot. Nafas is a journalist and certainly sides more with Western values and viewpoints, but has respect enough for the staunchly conservative traditions of the area to obey them without fuss.

Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry
1997
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Homayoun Ershadi

Loud, raucous, and ebullient are NOT words to describe Taste of Cherry. Philosophical, allegorical, and pondering are FAR better descriptors, as well as it being quietly critical of government and religious institutions. Impressive, especially considering this is an Iranian film.

Mr. Badii (Ershadi) is driving around in his car. He keeps looking at people on the side of the street. Some of them, he appears interested in; others, not so much. Eventually, he takes three strangers, one at a time, for a drive through the rolling dusty hills at the outskirts of Tehran, and offers each of them the same job: to bury him after he commits suicide, or save him if the attempt doesn’t work.

I adore ambiguity in film. I love it when a filmmaker trusts his or her audience well enough to allow them to make up their own mind, to allow them to draw their own conclusions about a film, rather than having to explicitly explain every tiny little thing. And wow, but is this film ambiguous on so many levels. Which, therefore, makes it awesome for me, but which, I will concede, make it incredibly frustrating for others.
No reason is ever given for Mr. Badii’s suicide ideation. I love that. It makes the film less about Mr. Badii’s individual story, and much more about mankind in general. Here is a man who is apparently healthy and wealthy and wants to kill himself. The film is definitely not so concerned with the why, but much more with the implication of the actual act. How the three strangers react to the idea is telling. The soldier, the theology student, and the nature lover – each displays markedly different responses to Badii’s proposition, and these reactions are, to me, more telling than any possible reason for Badii’s suicide in the first place. The government, the church, and nature: how is suicide viewed by these various institutions?

Ershadi’s performance as Mr. Badii is one of the finest restrained performances I have ever seen. He has a Herculean task as an actor: portray a suicidal man to an audience who is never given a reason for it. At the beginning of the film, before we know what this mysterious job entails, he can’t be too desperate in his actions, otherwise he would scare off prospective grave diggers. He seems like an ordinary middle-aged man who, for some reason, keeps inviting strangers to have a ride with him. When the truth comes out, Ershadi gradually makes Mr. Badii more and more desperate, but not in a gratuitous way. He paces, he rubs his hand together, he looks around nervously. We – actually, I’ll rephrase that, because so much of this film is in how you personally read it – I can see him starting to worry about getting someone to take care of him in his final hours, but also start to rethink the whole thing. In his final of the three conversations, with a Turkish taxidermist, Mr. Badii, who has, to this point in the film, dominated the conversations, is significantly suddenly silent. This is the man who has finally agreed to bury him. Why has he stopped talking? Instead, the taxidermist takes control of the situation as Badii silently sits and drives. Through his silence, Ershadi portrays so much emotion. In one of the final scenes of the film, we see Mr. Badii only through his curtained apartment window; even from a distance, Ershadi had me on the edge of my seat. I was drawn in. I was entranced. I really cannot say enough about this performance. It does everything it needs to without ever, EVER being over the top.


I find it incredibly telling about Kiarostami’s philosophy that he has a main character who wants to kill himself, but in order to kill himself, he must make connections with other people. For whatever reason, Mr. Badii wants to die, but he also cannot die without reaching out to the human race first. I interpret this as a profoundly humanist viewpoint from Kiarostami. Badii does not close himself off, but rather opens himself up to others, even in his darkest hours. Is this Kiarostami sharing a story of his past with us? I believe so.
Before writing about a film, I like to research it a bit in various places. To my shock, Roger Ebert gave this film one star when it came out. His critique? Boring. Really, Roger? That’s it? The film was boring? I argue vehemently against this. Although it’s not fast-paced, the film managed to build tension quite effectively through Ershadi’s carefully evolving performance, and at the end, I was on the edge of my seat with concern for Mr. Badii, wondering if he would actually go through with it or not. And a tremendous amount of what a viewer gets from this film is based on how much the viewer puts in; how I read the three passengers might be wholly different from how others read them, and Kiarostami leaves the door open for multiple interpretations. I really wonder if Roger Ebert should watch this film a second time; after all the health issues he’s had in the past ten years, I wonder if he wouldn’t read Badii’s journey a little differently now.

Ultimately, I am cautious about who I recommend this film to. It’s not a typical story, not told in any sort of typical manner, and it’s far more ambiguously allegorical than any standard Hollywood fare. If metaphysical discussions and minimalist cinema are your bag, then I cannot recommend Taste of Cherry enough. If you think Inception was a little slow-paced, then dear god, steer clear.

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10
I wrote this review about a month ago. I have since seen a second film of Kiarostami's, and I am even more fascinated by Taste of Cherry than I was at first. Taste of Cherry had real staying power with me. It's one of those movies that just wouldn't leave my brain. Made me like it even more. Dare I say that I'm becoming a Kiarostami fan girl? Perhaps!