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The Wind Will Carry UsRating:
Release Date: 17 September, 2002 Retail Price: $29.95 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: |
The Wind Will Carry Us Reviews
Another masterpiece from Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami is surely one of the top talents in cinema anywhere. For those accustomed to Hollywood, Bollywood or European movies, his work will seem deceptively simple and slow. Eschewing professional actors, special effects, top-40 and world music soundtracks, complicated make-up and massive advertising campaigns, Kiarostami makes films that unfold into an extraordinaray philosophical complexity that is firmly and compassionately anchored in day-to-day human experience.
In "The WInd WIll Carry Us," a man from Teheran moves to a small village in order to do a job for his employer. His exact mission is unclear. He has hilarious trouble with his cell phone, flirts with a milkmaid, watches the slow and subtle rhythms of village life, and sometimes does nothing.
It is a testament to Kiarostami's perception and skill that the film-- despite its simple story and slow pacing-- is utterly captivating and complex. The film's title comes from an old Persian love poem that the protagonist quotes during his flirtation:
"In the courtyard, the wind is about to meet the leaves."
The sexual allusion here is also a philosophical one, as the protagonist seems to be waiting for some kind of chemical reaction, something to shake him up and lift him. How this moment of awakening will come is the film's subject, and Kiarostami leads us to it the way life does-- indirectly. We must watch, and look, and SEE, what is happening in the village-- and in the contrast between the protagonist's frantic running after his phone calls and the village's slow and deliberate movement toward the film's climactic ritual emerge its meaning.
Kiarostami's cinematography is simple and effective. He makes superb use of Iran's fall colours-- gold and brown-- and rural dust and emptiness. The simplest scenes-- a man buy cooking oil, women walking-- are fascinating in their wealth of simple detail, and the film's subtle yet powerful climax ends with an unforgettable image of a humerus (thigh bone) drifting in the river.
If life is what happens while we are busy making other plans-- and if art is what happens while we are busy having expectations of film genres-- the Kiarostami's masterwork is living art indeed.
will she or won't she?
Another Kiarostami masterpiece. His films begin in the middle of a conversation and slowly grow and develop and evolve. You just never really know where it's going, and the pace is usually along the lines of "meandering". His films don't race and scream around, they just gradually flow. This can be infuriating to some folks. To me, it's wonderful. I love to study the scenery and the interpersonal relations, and you are given ample opportunity to absorb and digest.
By watching my inlaws I can see that the pace set here among the people in the villages that he enjoys filming is true. "Right away" means in a month or so, or whenever. So when the film-maker goes to document the traditional grieving and burial rituals(which is taboo) among these villagers because this elderly woman is going to die "right away", I knew immediately that it could be days or years. It's enjoyable to me to see the frustration of the fast-paced city people among the rural folk, I found myself giggling often.
However...
to me this film took a potentially dark turn towards the end. It doesn't detract from the film, it plays into it quite well. And maybe it's just me. But I had a question about some possible actions on the part of the film-maker in the movie. I keep trying to get other folks to watch it also so we can compare impressions. I can't say more or it would give too much away and ruin the film, and I'm just not going to do that.
Nobody else here has mentioned it, so perhaps I'm wrong. But I've seen each of the Kiarostami films that are released here and I think I've got a pretty good feel for his particular director's language. So if you hit a spot when you find yourself thinking, "i wonder...", let's compare notes!!!
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