User reviews

Typically enigmatic Kiarostami film (although one not without some deadpan comedy, and with all the inherent geographic and cultural fascination associated with his work for Western audiences) winds through his previous work and themes, and through the remote Iranian village in which it's set, as gracefully and surely as a river (a somewhat fearsome one, for all its calmness). It's about (apparently) a group of photographers or filmmakers - only one of whom is ever seen directly - awaiting a mysterious ceremony that will follow an ailing old woman's death (actually, I'm not entirely sure of the accuracy of even that broad a synopsis) but although the narrative may be in part a death watch, the film itself is "a subtle personal debate about the value of being alive" (a beautiful one-line summary by Deborah Young of Variety). The film strikes a mystical balance between its parched environment and the signs of the modern world: the process of getting the cell phone to work forms a recurring pattern, warily intertwining with fragments of old poems and evocations of antiquity, mystery and ritual. The ending was, to me, more satisfying than in his last film A Taste Of Cherry, but the film really requires a second viewing: after seeing it just once, you walk away slightly deflated - even indignant - at having largely failed its navigational challenge.

An amazing Abbas Kiarostami movie. Inspired by the poem of Furug Ferruhzad, in this film, the director tells the universality experienced in daily life in the Iranian countryside without getting involved in the slightest arabesque element.

When the epic simplicity of the movie is watched with admiration, you will feel sorry for the millions of dollars spent on Hollywood movies of the new era.

It is a very interesting and compelling film that on the surface seems to be one of the most boring ever made. "Wind Will Carry Us" tells the story of Behzad, the documentary director, who travels with his crew from Tehran to the tiny remote village of Siah Dareh where they hope to document an ancient funeral ritual. While there, all they can do is wait for an old lady to die and to hope that it would happen sooner than later. The lady does not seem to hurry to meet her Creator. Nothing much happens with the exception of waiting and repetitions of the same conversations on the cell phone with the constant interruption of calls but the honest and poetic celebration of the world around us shines through every frame of this ode to joy of life. One of my friends, who had recommended the movie to me, suggested that it should not be over- aestheticized and I totally agree. The film's serious political and social metaphors and overtones are undeniable but in its core, it is a moving, life-confirming, and soulful comedy. Watching my first Abbas Kiarastami's movie was a very rewarding experience.

A man out of time finds the way back in. And so, too, do we. Films about such big subjects, metaphysical, quasi-metaphysical, or near metaphysical, can't afford to be petty. So this one meanders, lays a loose and light hand on its subject, finds and follows it by a process of mutual discovery, audience and film maker wandering an unknown road, led by faith in a final destination.

Three men journey from Tehran to a tiny remote village for purposes unknown. Contrasts evolve between their urban modernity and the ageless life of the rural village. They're ostensibly there for the funeral of an ancient woman, a stranger, not a relative, who confounds their expectations by not dying. Let's just say, for the sake preserving the mystery, that they're there, in a way, to cheat death, to rob the villagers of a ritual they themselves fail to understand.

By way of first person narration, the film centers on their leader (Behzad Dourani), a man who accepts being called "engineer," but really isn't--or is he? The perspective is doubled: The world of the film narrowly revolves around him at the same time that it doesn't, claustrophobically relating everything to his solitary universe, at the same time that it encompasses the full scope of a world independent of him, thus giving the lie to his limitations, his distortions and blindness. This is narrative executed with great skill, care, and a free imagination.

Forced to wait, idle and deprived of most of his customary modern distractions, his anxiety, emptiness, and his unease surface; this is a man out of time, who resists the present and fights against the future. His one connection to the outside world, a cell phone, requires every time it goes off that he drop whatever he's doing to run to his truck and drive up to a mountain-top cemetery for clear reception, an association of technology with death concurrent with its indifference to and alienation from it, a comical escapade repeated periodically throughout to give the film a rhythm, an intrusive repetitious beat that contrasts with the natural rhythms of the village.

With nothing else to do, he gradually is tugged by and eventually succumbs to the life around him. This is the kind of movie in which a shot is held so a rooster can walk across the frame. We, too, are made to wait. While waiting, stuck in a plotless limbo, all sorts of beautiful and instructive things emerge from an apparently banal reality, if one cares to notice. There is the unassuming visual poetry of the world, the shadows on a wall of a woman hanging clothes, rolling hills of golden grass, and the organic architecture of a village molded into a hillside; and the subtlety of social interactions: the tender trust of a young boy; the engineer's yearning for a pot of milk, which finally leads him into a primeval cave-like cellar alone with a fecund young woman who refuses his money; the casualness of the birth of a neighbor woman's 10th child; the shrewish complaints of a cafe proprietor, which are answered by one her customers with implacable peasant wisdom; and so on, one scene following upon another, small miracles falling into our laps unannounced.

If only this process of poetic inference, metaphor, indirection, and openness were in more widespread use, commonly adapted, thus more fully developed, instead of the literal dry analytic "objectivity" which tyrannizes modern fictions, nails meaning as if to a cross. Here there isn't even a hint of manipulation or exploitation, not a drop of didacticism. Instead, Kiarostami achieves the difficult feat of keeping water in cupped hands. The film teaches us to observe nature by observing nature.

'The Wind Will Carry Us' is above all a detective story in its purest form, about the desire to know. This act of enquiry is extended to both the recording gaze of the camera and that something else emanating in the film's figurative language, the prevalance of natural objects that are what they are - trees, bridges, turtles, the wind, the river etc. - but also something else, something beautifully expressed, but only partially glimpsed, in the quotations from scripture and poetry that run through the film, from that gorgeous description at the beginning of trees as being greener than God's dreams, to the closing image of the hurled bone carried by the rapid stream down goat-chomping banks.

Such an image may remind Western viewers of Kubrick or Renoir. This is the large 'problem' with the film; rather, the problem of any viewer confronting any artwork from an alien culture. I was thinking of not even going to 'Wind', in spite of Kiarostami's reputation as THE director of the 1990s, and the fact that I loved 'Close-Up'. Early reviews made it seem dispiritingly forbidding, and who wants to go to a film if you have to read a ten-page article in 'Cineaste' to understand it? This kind of 'praise' is ultimately detrimental to the films - do we really 'get' Mizoguchi, Ray or Paradjanov films in their entirety either?

I won't lie: it's frustrating watching a film full of obviously symbolic moments that I can't grasp because I am culturally ignorant: the last ten minutes especially are baffling in their move to the ritual or abstract. The risk is to transpose Iranian figuration to their Western meanings, and thus dilute them. But, the film, as Kiarostami's are reputed to, unearth the universal through concentration on the culturally specific (although I've always found 'universality' a dubious aim).

Like I say, the film is a detective story, and if we can't solve the figurative, or metaphysical clues (although most of the poems are clear and lovely and resonant), there are other mysteries, both for the viewer and the main character. Who are these disembodied voices we hear but cannot see guiding us through a landscape at once natural, historical, poetic, social and religiously symbolic? Why have they come to this particular village? Why does the hero keep asking about this particular woman, and why does another woman keep ringing him on his borrowed mobile? Who are his shadowy companions?

Our bewilderment is shared by the 'modern' protagonist, who has to negotiate this seemingly medieval landscape with the aid of a guide (there are many fairy tale motifs throughout, from the forking roads and car breaking down, to the man getting trapped in a hole of his own making, reminding us that Iran was one of the fertile stages for the 'Arabian Nights').

This film may mean most to Iranians and pseuds, but will surely be resonant to anyone who's read Beckett, or been simply burdened with humanity - the constant waiting for something inexplicable to happen; the unseen, insistent powers that determine everything; the gallows humour of the only clear signal for a mobile phone being in a cemetary. The amazing thing about Kiarostami's famed (almost Borgesian) formalism and his metaphors is the way they arise so naturally from the realistic environment he's portraying, almost so you'd miss them - you have to look hard for the traces, the lines, the paralells, the repetitions, the angles, the reflections, the complex use of point of view that often seems literally god-like, and is of ambiguous attribution. Above all, it is a funny, engrossing, unsentimental look at people we rarely see on screen.

Beautiful cinematography, nice camera work, good acting, but a story that seems to go nowhere. I was feeling a bit frustrated when I came out of the theater. Why was the engineer in this village anyway? Why the importance of the old lady? OK, we've seen the way rural Iranian society works, the place of the women, some cultural aspects of the people, but the ending had some damping effect on me. It's like a pizza without cheese, it's missing something.

Then perhaps I missed the point and I should see it again?

Out of 100, I gave it 72.

What a wonderful movie. Iranian movies are making way internationally and are also becoming an important political tool. The leading Iranian director is Abbas Kiarostami. I really enjoyed the rhythm of this strange and different movie. This is an art-film at its very best. All set in the wonderful scenery of Kurdistan. The pictures and the poetry is beautiful. The cast is natural, common people. Please buy the DVD and see it! The movie is - unfortunately - sure not to come to a theater near you. The director Abbas Kiarostami says that 50% of a movie is made by associations and in the audience own head. Very different from the American movies where everything usually is served on one plate.

A film which immerses us into the simple lives of Kurdish villagers living in a rocky town tucked between two bluffs in Northwestern Iran, as a man and his colleagues show up for reasons which aren't apparent for at least half its runtime. They say they're engineers but are awfully interested in the state of a very old woman nearing death. I won't say more so as not to spoil it, but also because there is little spoil - this isn't a very plot-driven film. The man is constantly driving up to the nearest hilltop to get reception for his phone, where he meets a man digging a ditch through a cemetery and acquires a human thigh bone, his own little memento mori, and he's regularly asking the women in the town for milk. There are some beautiful scenes of the rugged people and their surroundings, particularly towards the end, and the Persian poetry that's sprinkled in throughout the film is wonderful.

I can't say I truly loved it though, because I don't think the payoff was strong enough to overcome the very slow pace. That is undoubtedly a part of the point, slowing the viewer down to the rhythms of this village, but aside from marveling over being transported to a place I'll never see in person, I didn't find the dialogue particularly interesting, and the film was about a half hour longer than it should have been. There is a warmth and politeness in how these people talk to one another, and you can feel Kiarostami's undeniable humanism while watching it. We're here for a short time in this beautiful place, he tells us, so enjoy it to the fullest, because we have no guarantees about an afterlife. Great message, but a near miss for the film as a whole.

Nothing more to say. Because saying more is spoiling the fantastic delicate texture of this piece of art, of poetry, that stays at the same level with the great poetic cinema of all time. Let's say, nevertheless( because IMDb doesn't allow comments with less than 10 lines), that the beauty of the movie is so great, so relaxing and enriching is visualizing all this gorgeous cinematography that it will make your day. Watch this if you are stressed out, if you have a skin rush, if you feel uneasy. This movie, along with Spring, summer...(Kim Ki Duk) is one of the few movies with therapeutic effect that I know. Iran is such a great country, such a great culture and past they have...A big Bravo!

Maybe I just don't get it, but it seems as though I should. I usually like slow, sensitive, moody films with a deep human message. I'm usually the guy who sticks with a movie and finds it interesting when my more action minded friends have impatiently abandoned it. I love Eric Rohmer, and Ozu, for example. The setting of this film is exotic, the values and customs of the people are interesting. I thought this film would be something I'd love.

It wasn't.

Partly, I think it was the acting. The lead was good, but the acting of everyone else was - well, I don't like to criticize amateurs. It looks like the director used local non-actors for most of the roles, and while this did give the film a certain reality and authenticity, the non-professionals "acted" as if they were reading from a card. Scared and wooden, they seemed to be hoping they wouldn't goof up on the words. The only exception was that the child would occasionally seem natural, but in situations where he was still and before the camera, he usually acted as wooden as anyone else. This sort of thing tends to break the suspension of disbelief that is necessary for an audience to get involved in a film. Many people are too busy reading subtitles to notice this, but then many people do notice it even though they are reading subtitles. I am one of the latter.

Then there was the script. For a while it was difficult to figure out what exactly was going on and why the engineer was there. I don't think that was the director's intention and it may be the fault of the subtitle translation. However, the effect is to confuse the viewer for far too long. In fact if I hadn't picked up the case and read the liner notes during the film I may not have figured it out at all.

The pace is slow. Many great films have a slow pace, but slowness doesn't necessarily make a great film by itself. Great directors can build interest in a slow film with mood, a slow but steady accumulation of details and other interesting things. But without considerable skill at film-making, slowness is just - slow. There are scenes that just seem to be endless for no real reason. A long sequence of a dung beetle pushing a ball of dung, for example. There may be a symbolic meaning here but after a bit you either get it or you don't and there is no point in letting the scene continue to run.

Too many films today are superficial, and any director who tries to make a film with a deep human message, deserves some credit. However, just because a director has this as his theme, does not mean the movie will be a great one. Unfortunalatly, in comparison with films by great and highly skilled directors such as Rohmer or Ozu, this film does not measure up. I believe the director had a good idea but he overreached beyond his skills.

I hope that Abbas Kiarostami will continue to make films. Perhaps he will develop into a great director. Hopefully he will continue to tackle difficult themes, but more successfully. There are seeds here that could develop. Perhaps one day this film will be viewed as an imperfect early effort by a now great director. Perhaps.

This is a beautiful film that celebrates life and culture. It is entirely devoted to the Forough Farrokhzad poem (cited below / I've marked it for stanza; but not for line changes), which serves as it nucleus and core.

[Stanza 1] In my small night, alas, The wind has an appointment with the trees, In my small night there is fear of devastation.

[Stanza 2] Listen. Do you hear the dark wind whispering? I look upon this bliss with alien eyes I am addicted to my sorrow Listen. Do you hear the dark wind whispering?

[Stanza 3] Now something is happening in the night The moon is red and agitated And the roof may cave in at any moment.

[Stanza 4] The clouds have gathered like a bunch of mourners And seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.

[Stanza 5] A moment And after it, nothing. Beyond this window the night trembles And the earth Will no longer turn. Beyond this window an enigma worries for you and for me.

[Stanza 6] Oh you who are so verdant Place your hands like a burning memory in my hands. And leave your lips that are warm with life To the loving caresses of my lips. The wind will carry us away, The wind will carry us away.

Enjoy it with an open and rested mind. The style is minimalist for action and words, and panoramic for scenery. It's an artful exploration of life where the viewer has to glue the pieces together, from city group's arrival and to their take-away from the experience. Details count. Don't miss any of them.

Beautifully photographed, loaded with all sorts of little things which do much to contribute to the film's overall sense of everything big and small, and ever so slyly filled with humor, Kiarostami has created a great film here about people whom we see and don't see (We never see the "engineer's" crew, the man digging the deep ditch at the cemetery, the the supposedly dying old woman, the girl in the cave milking the cow for the engineer). I know this remote village is not Tehran but I see no false note in Kiarstami's depiction of his own people (He would certainly know better than any of us.) The film crew is from Tehran, and, as personified by the "engineer," neither of these two representatives of Iranian culture are remotely religious fanatics. They're folks like me and you. I'm aware the Mullahs control Iran, and strict adherence to Muslim law is their credo, but we don't feel it from the villagers or film crew. Perhaps, when a country feels the great weight of a mighty army roaming the lands of its next door neighbor, its leaders are forced to take extremist positions. When their leaders hear George W. Bush implying Iran might be next, they may believe a nuclear deterrent is all they have. Bush should watch this film and get some sense of, at least, what a sizable portion of Iran's population is like, and maybe he'll stop the tough talk, though I doubt it.

The Iranian film Bad ma ra khahad bord (1999) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title, The Wind Will Carry Us. It was written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami.

Behzad Dorani portray the engineer, who arrives at a remote rural village with a film crew. They're there to film a funeral ceremony, for reasons that are revealed to us slowly and indirectly.

However, the woman who is dying, for whom the funeral is planned, is lingering on. This continues for weeks. The engineer's crew wants to go home, and his editor in Tehran wants him to get the story. (An ongoing joke is the annoying fact that the engineer's cell phone rings in the village, but the phone won't work unless he leaps into his vehicle and drives to higher ground. This happens over and over during the film.)

While everyone is waiting, the engineer meets people, finds a young student who serves as his assistant, and recites poetry. In fact, a central scene is when the engineer recites the romantic poem "The Wind Will Carry Us" to a young woman. The poem was written by Forough Farrokhzad (1934 -1967). Farrokhzad is considered Iran's most revered female poet.

The young woman in the move has attended school for five years. She asks the engineer for how many years Farrokhzad attended school. He gently tells her, "Five years. You don't have to be a scholar to be a great poet."

As is usual for Kiarostami, his camera doesn't always show us the image we expect. We can hear--but never see--his camera crew. That's also true of the dying woman and a man with whom he speaks when he's at the top of the hill using his cell phone. (The man he's talking to is digging a deep ditch, so we can't see him.)

Sometimes the camera leaves the plot completely, to show us something we didn't know we'd see. For example, in his frustration the engineer kicks a turtle. The turtle ends up on its back. We watch the turtle as it tries to right itself, although the engineer has driven away.

I love Kiarostami's work, and I've tried to see every picture he's directed. He is in a class of his own. I think that you either admire his work or don't care for it at all. I admire it. The Wind Will Carry Us has a strong IMDb rating of 7.5. I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

This film really broke a lot of molds, and one can certainly find this film to really challenge you as you watch it, to kind of find your own place as a viewer, and know how to watch the film. Usually one does not have to think so much when watching a movie, and usually by the end of it the viewer feels that they have some semblance of what happened, and what was going on, but this film breaks the mold and really is the exception to the rule.

At times I did not like the film because I was left in the dark, but as I grew to accept it I found it to be very stimulating in many ways. I merely resigned myself to the happy ignorance of looking at the beautifully shot scenery of Iran, and following the Engineer through his routine that became quite repetitive.

I feel as if the symbolism was running too deep for myself, and that Abbas Kiarostami was reaching too deep into the story and expecting the viewer to make too many inferrences and to take away more from the film than was obviously presented. This is one of those films that perhaps was too artsy for me to like.

However, it was well-acted, well-shot, and well-produced. At times, dragging on, and overly challenging, and too repetitive. Not something that I would encourage somebody to watch, but if you have an interest in this sort of film or Iranian film in general, I would not discourage you, either. It was a decent look into a slice-of-life of Iran. I do say it was very new, poetic, and fresh, but a little too much so. It was overly challenging. Abbas Kiarostami tries to be a poet, but I do not think I (or many others) were able to read this poem he recorded.

Have very much enjoyed Iranian films but was lost with this one. Starts out with a long ambling conversation from within a jeep but no faces. Some persons are traveling somewhere for a dark reason that was never revealed that I could tell. The setting was outstanding and the cinematography very good. The main protagonist was neither fish nor fowl but rather aggravating. One little boy was very cute. One woman was memorable. One dramatic event seemed unrelated to the story which seemed to end when the camera ran out of film. I may try it again sometime. At least it is not the dreary stuff from the movie factory with cardboard cutouts for characters. I came to IMDb tonight to see what it was all about, but still don't know.

A film with the stamp of master Kiarostami: great cinematography, good text, simple story, competent acting (including children, it is important to be highlighted). Here, exploring the environment is more than telling a story with many ups-and-downs. It is another grammar of cinema and Abbas Kiarostami masters it. Critic J. Hoberman describes well: "The Wind Will Carry Us is a film about nothing and everything - life, death, the quality of light on dusty hills." In some sense, "The wind will carry us" is the other side of "Taste of cherry".

What is most striking about this movie is the ethereal photography that effortlessly that transports the viewer into a harshly beautiful locale, affording a fascinating glimpse into the lives of folks in a village in a timeless and desolate corner of Iran. That is the positive.

The negative is overwhelmingly the irritating and emotionless main character. Less of an annoyance, but nevertheless a negative, is the lack of any consistent symbolism, meaningful psychological representation or even a satisfying denouement.

The leading character did not appear to be optimally cast. His character portrayal was completely underwhelming, and I found myself becoming increasingly weary of hearing his whiny voice go and on.

That's another thing about this movie (and "Ten", also by the same director) - endless prattle. The opening shots of this movie are simply spectacular - very unique scenery that I was content to watch unfold, never mind the story. But then the "Engineer" and his pal start their yak and it kills the mood. They just talk for the sake of talking - no direction, no pauses, no point, just one over the other. I think this and other subsequent portions of this movie would have been more effective and dramatic by the use of silence. The entire movie lends itself very strongly and naturally to silence, rather than incessant, pointless and distracting conversation.

The kid in the movie is good, but once again - the lines he is forced to deliver are sometimes so unnatural and garish as to make the viewer wince. No kid that age would speak like that! (Same comment for "Ten").

All in all - a mixed bag. Nothing very symbolic or enigmatic here that is worth the watching. But if you watch it with lowered expectations, you will vastly enjoy a glimpse into an another world - an insulated world of community, rustic reality, open spaces and open hearts. And that is definitely worth something.

A film about an invasive film crew invading a rural village filmed in a rural village, well even in English this might be tricky to sort of the levels of exploitation. Add in the fact that the crux of the film is likely delivered in a poem in a cave underground, and I felt far, far away from the Farsi here in the U.S.

So while I can say I appreciated aspects of the film, I really think I did not understand it. Is this a cautionary tale of how outsiders don't necessarily help a situation, but they cannot turn a blind eye as people fall ill, or are trapped in holes they have dug themselves. It feels like something significant along those lines is being said, but then there's the notion that this is a comedy? Really? I guess the constraints of technology, and those wild rushes to get to a higher ground for a satellite phone that in turn merely debase the user of said phone has its laughs? There was some humor also with the tea lady and the bickering surrounding her husband and her. And what of the young boy, his teacher and the school.

If this film is the wind, it moved through me more than it moved me. My loss I sense...

I am a great fan of Iranian films, and I have many titles in my collection. They are usually low budget, but very creative and sensitive movies. However, I found "Bad Ma Ra Khahad Bord" very boring and overrated. I do not know whether today it was not the right day for me to watch it, if I was too tired, or if I missed the point, but I did not like the story. For Western viewers like me, it is very interesting to see this total different culture of an ancient people, the geography of their country, their costumes and mainly their great concern with education, presented in most of the Iranian movies. Further, Abbas Kiarostami is a recognized and awarded director. And in accordance with the cover of the VHS, this movie awarded the Venice Festival in the category Best Film. But all of these elements together are not necessary or sufficient to make me like this movie. I have some friends of mine that will certainly criticize my review, but this is my honest opinion. "Bad Ma Ra Khahad Bord" is interesting while shows a different culture and geography, but also too long and tedious. Anyway, I intend to see it again in a near future in a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to reevaluate my present opinion. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Vento Nos Levará" ("The Wind Will Carry Us")