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.
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.