Abbas Kiarostami-Bad ma ra khahad bord ('The Wind Will Carry Us') (1999)

Behzad, a filmmaker from Tehran travels to a remote mountain village secretly planning to record a local ritual ceremony surrounding an old dying woman. Upon arrival, Behzad and his crew are met by Farzad, a young boy from the town who at first becomes their guide but ultimately becomes their informant on the fate of the old woman. Convincing the locals that they are archeologists looking for buried treasure, Behzad attempts to befriend them with mixed results. As the rustling wind, golden light and deep shadows of the village cast an alluring spell, the deathwatch drags on and the woman stubbornly clings to life, leaving Behzad's crew impatient. Evocative and haunting, THE WIND WILL CARRY US is constructed with Kiarostami's trademark soulful serenity, creating an extraordinarily beautiful and moving film. New Yorker Video




Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0209463/ - Plot Outline)




The movies of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami defy the expectations of anyone raised on Hollywood or even European films. "The Wind Will Carry Us", for example, is about a filmmaker who comes to a small village where an old woman is dying, hoping to document a harsh ritual of mourning practiced by the villagers. Unfortunately for him, the invalid clings to life, and he spends most of his time driving up and down a mountainside because his cell phone only gets good reception at the top. (–Bret Fetzer - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)




But while he waits and frets, around him the life of the village continues, and this vitality–captured in moments that seem like a diversion from the movie's supposed storyline–is fundamentally what The Wind Will Carry Us is about. What seems dull one moment will suddenly become a rich and subtle expression of human behavior. A strikingly different cinematic experience. (–Bret Fetzer - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)




A beautiful but limited exercise in aesthetic formalism from the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. An engineer from Tehran (Behzad Dourani) arrives in a small mountain village in order to record some sort of ritual that depends on the death of an old lady. But the old woman, whom we never see, refuses to die, and the engineer waits and waits and begins to question his life. He becomes friends with a little boy, and converses with a variety of people in town, some of whom are also out of sight. He drives again and again to a hilltop to get a clear signal for his cell phone so he can call Tehran and make small talk. (-David Denby - The New Yorker)




The picture has a mournful, slow rhythm, rather like that of prayer or a stately ballad, and clearly Kiarostami is saying something about the value of putting down roots versus modern restlessness. But when life is simplified this way and then arranged into a pattern, it yields meaning without much struggle. However handsome the movie, one may feel the game has been rigged. In Farsi. (-David Denby - The New Yorker)