The Wind Will Carry Us

'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.

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.

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.

An engineer (Behzad Dourani) travels to a remote Iranian village on an inexplicable assignment that involves his unseen assistants digging holes. The men work near a hill that turns out to be one of the main settings, and even characters, in Cannes Palme d'Or winner Abbas Kiarostami's new movie, "The Wind Will Carry Us."

Throughout the picture, the perpetually befuddled engineer drives up to the breezy incline to receive cell phone calls that don't come through clearly in the village below. Do the calls concern an old woman who's dying? A search for buried treasure? The exhumation of dead bodies? We never hear the other end of the conversations, so we never find out.

The modern hero's jeep and cell-phone dominated life seems empty of purpose, other than the impulses and sensory input of the moment. The lives of the traditional villagers don't seem any more meaningful. Kiarostami's picture is no ethnographic celebration of simple-hearted, but wise peasants with a profound culture.

The movie is like Samuel Becket's definitive theatre of the absurd, "Waiting for Godot." But while the depressed Irish playwright's characters wander around in a desolate landscape, Kiarostami's engineer is placed in a spacious, richly colored world that yields tantalizing, paradoxical hints of meaning, despite the random, aimless movements of the human beings who inhabit it.

Perhaps we're seeing this story from the wind's point-of-view.

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.