El viento nos llevará

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.

Another user who reviewed the film speaks of a film so full of 'symbolism' that he couldn't grasp. Maybe because it wasn't there? I'm generally not a fan of minimalism but Kiarostami grips me like no one else. I went out to take the trash after watching this and everything around me felt more alive, the nightsky, moon, trees blowing in the wind, I experienced all this in expansive vivid detail like new life was breathed into them. This is what a Kiarostami film does to me. It's about the sights and sounds of a life simple and profound in that simplicity, profound in the stoic sense of an old man sitting down in the same place every day to sip his tea. The wisdom here is not one of tremendous insight into something we didn't know, but a remembrance of something we knew and have forgotten and need to listen as the wind carries it back. Maybe the next world is beautiful muses a country doctor to our protagonist as they cross golden fields of wheat blowing in the wind, but no one has come back to tell us, so the present world is all we have; and how beautiful it is.

Beautiful Persian Zen.

The film is about waiting for something to happen, waiting for the death of an old woman which an engineer from Tehran and two of his associates have come to document; waiting for a narrative. Every now and then the engineer's cell phone rings, he has poor signal so he must rush to his car and drive to a nearby hill to get good signal. On top of the rocky hill there's a man digging a ditch, sight unseen, and the engineer idly chats with him down in his hole. That man digs up a thigh bone that once belonged to someone, the cemetery of the nearby village is on that hill, and throws it up to our curious protagonist. He stores it away in his car, a symbol of life come and gone. In the end he throws it down a creek and we see the old fickle bone flow down the water. All the symbolism in the film speaks for itself. Trees lush green and fields yellow golden with wheat and a hot dusty wind blowing over this.

I have great admiration for the way Kiarostami makes films. He's so open to the filmmaking process, no strings attached, script, rehearsal, staging, all the mechanics subordinate to the real deal. It takes balls to go into this with as little safeguards. A lot of the film seems to have been improvised on the spot, in that small Iranian village, the faces are real, their casual chitchat the casual chitchat of real people. Take him or leave him, not a lot of people can make films the way he does and make them good.

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.

This is poetry. The landscapes filmed by Kiarostami are beautiful. The cinematography is just fabulous. It is a very simple and honest movie, about life, and death too. It just flows... Most of the people seen in the movie are not actors, they are really just the population of Siah Dareh and that makes this look real, not some fake pretentious bullshit like many we see nowadays. The interaction with the little boy is truly touching. I loved this and you will either love it or find it the most boring movie ever. It isn't, really and if you do find it boring, maybe your own true self isn't just ready for this type of film. I truly recommend it. The words "bad ma ra khahad bord" will remain with me forever. I was marked by this beautiful piece of art.

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.