Movie Reviews for The Wind Will Carry Us

The Wind Will Carry Us

	List Price: ~~$29.95~~ Our Price: $18.49 You Save: $11.46 (38%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.11 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases

Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

Movie Reviews of The Wind Will Carry Us

Movie Review: Dark Wind Whispering
Summary: 4 Stars

This film is called BAD MA RA KHAHAD BORD in Iran. Abbas Kiarostami is the director, writer, producer, and editor of the film. He functions as both innovator and diplomat in those capacities. He has directed 37 films, and has been "discovered" by the West since 1990. In 1997, his film, TASTE OF CHERRY, won the Palm d'Or at Cannes. Presently he is a professor, and he lives in Paris.

As director he is creative and rogue. He breaks away from conventional narrative, and usually works without a script. He improvises, composes, matches dialogue to the landscape, and then later edits all of it. This gives many of his films, including this one, a documentary feel. He utilizes mostly non-actors and a small crew. He does not seem concerned about the girdle of genre or the cleats of convention. He creates something else in cinema, something "new".

He cast the landscape as a character. Working with his excellent cinematographer, Mahmoud Kalari, they set up golden and ochre panoramas of village and countryside. This conformed to the respected Asian directors who have used the landscape as a living thing, and not merely a backdrop. Kiarostami would hold a shot double long, and just let things happen within the frame. This really gave a sense of immediacy to the viewer. For some, however, it was slow and boring.

Was there a plot in this film? Well, there was, kind of. Behzad Dourani, called the Engineer, masquerading as an anthropologist, or a treasure hunter, who is probably a filmmaker, and alter-ego for Kiarostami, drove 450 miles north of Tehran to a small Kurdish village. Through a contact in the village, he was aware of a special ceremony that was going to occur when a village elder, an old lady, dies. He was there to film and to capture that ceremony. The old woman, however, did not comply. People were so kind to her, she decided to take nourishment, and she returned to the land of the living.

There were several, almost hidden, themes in the movie. For one thing, the director worked hard at creating a more humane face on the Arab world. Post 9/11, that is quite a task. Nothing political was ever discussed in the film. Another theme was the importance of education. An intense of love of learning, of math, engineering, poetry, and literature worked themselves into the fabric of the non-plot. Something else explored was the reality of death, the close proximity we all share with it, and the need to enjoy our lives every moment that we breathe. Lastly the primary theme was Nature vs. Technology, and the postulate that things natural were preferred.

I liked this film, even though I had to have patience with it. Artistically and cinematically, it required some learning on my part. I did so gladly. It is a wonderful movie cloaked in non-convention.

Movie Review: Atmosphere carries this movie.
Summary: 4 Stars

Abbas Kiarostami's *The Wind Will Carry Us* is about a small film crew from Tehran who station themselves in a remote village That Time Forgot. Their mission? To capture on film the ancient, savage funeral rites of the villagers. The object is a 100-year-old woman on her death bed. Everyone, including the bored film crew, commences to hurry up and wait for the woman to expire . . . and there's your plot. Typical Kiarostami. This director has taken his oblique, deflective style to pedantic extremes in this movie. Amusingly, Kiarostami allows only one member of the film crew to get any screen time -- the other two are always off-camera. The old woman is never seen. The ditch-digger that the filmmaker befriends is always in his ditch, and never seen. (At one point he's rescued after the hole he's digging collapses on him . . . but we never see the rescue.) The savage funeral rites are only alluded to (well, there's one detail about face-scarring, but that's it). And the ending is your typical Kiarostami anticlimax. I can't imagine that American audiences are going to avidly take to this approach of filmmaking. (Never mind that the movie is from Iran. You know -- Point B on the Axis of Evil.) Indeed, it's a fair criticism to say that the director simply dawdles too long in this static world. 20 minutes could have been easily shaved without any serious harm done to the film: for instance, there's at least two scenes too many of the Tehran filmmaker having to jump into his 4x4 and drive up to higher ground in order to receive his cell phone calls. (His "Hallo? Hallo?" starts to grate after about the 50th time.) But if you're willing to suspend your impatience, the rewards are very ample. For instance, you're completely immersed in rural Iranian life. The village, with its uneven architecture, nooks and crannies, and pitch-black underground basements, is made truly unforgettable in a way that only cinema can achieve. Same goes for the staggeringly beautiful environs of the town, which include shimmering fields of grass straight out of Paradise. The movie's mundane incidents and rhythms make you feel as if you're actually there, as a member of the main character's film crew. And by taking such a long time in this setting, by refusing to neglect the tiniest detail, Kiarostami makes his themes -- Man's interaction with both his environment and his fellow-man -- rise naturally to the surface without having to resort to strained "point-making" or "lesson-teaching". (In other words, Preaching.) It's the old Show-Don't-Tell approach -- and it works every time. *The Wind Will Carry Us* reminded me of *Local Hero*, in terms of the stranger-in-town element, combined with the don't-exploit-the-locals element. The comparison is high praise.

Movie Review: this was a good introduction to Iranian cinema
Summary: 4 Stars

I'm glad this was the first Iranian film I saw. I might have been put off if I had seen Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" or Samira Makhmalbaf's "Apple," but thanks to this film I began to acquire a taste for what is surely some of the most interesting filmmaking going on in recent years. One of the finest moments in the film is a subtly erotic moment when the protagonist recites the poem by Forugh Farrokhzad from which the film takes its name to a girl milking an animal (a goat? a cow?). (Farrokhzad - an Iranian feminist poetess who died at age 32 - is very interesting in her own right, and the introduction to her work is another thing I'm grateful to Kiarostami for.)
The pace and style are very similar to those of Gus Van Sant's recent films (e.g., "Gerry"). I personally find this very refreshing.
A minor point: many reviewers refer to "Arabs." In a time when so much is going on in the Middle East, this kind of ignorance is very irritating. Since when is Iran an Arab country? The people depicted are mostly Kurds.

Movie Review: Confused
Summary: 4 Stars

Where does anyone get the idea that the main character was a film maker? Granted the "plot" was a little confusing, but unless something was lost in translation, it never indicates that he is a film maker. For one small thing, he never films anything and only takes a few photos. Doesn't it lean more toward him working for some undefined "telecommunications company" involved in the construction of the tower? Even the offical review seems to get this point wrong.
Fine acting by the supporting cast. I find it hard to beleive that they were actors at all.