Gabbeh

GABBEH is so magical, colorful and involving that it makes me feel like a child listening a "once upon a time" story. The film is superb. Every scene is pure magic. At the end, you feel like you were dreaming: a beautiful shining dream. Don't worry if you want to see again and again again... See it now - if it's possible. 10/10

Mohsen Makhmalbaf has done it with every movie he's made. Gabbeh is a major film where beauty is presented in the original language of filmmaking: music -not only the "human music", rather than the music from the sounds of nature- and images -"life is color", "love is color" is said just twice in the film, but the entire film is exactly that: life and love, which is just color-. The expressiveness of the landscape, the Iranian women's clothing and fabric are the main characters of the film. Because masterpieces do not need words, high-tech, major budgets, nor even a plot. 60 minutes of beauty, that's Gabbeh.

Life is color, says one of the characters, and the dominant after-impression here is of the stunning array of bright hues; stamped against the desert like distinct life forces. In an early scene, an old man instructs a class on the colors of nature - reaching his hands outside the frame as if godlike - he touches the sky, and his hands come back blue; he stretches toward a meadow, and brings back flowers. It's too sincere and straightforwardly beautiful to be dismissed as a conjuring trick, and the film can't be regarded simply as a pictorial exercise, partly because it's just too difficult for that; the narrative is as subtle and allusive as the mastery of its dominant image - the carpet weaving. For example, when a young girl is killed while going after a kid goat on the mountain, it's symbolized simply by the rolling of a ball of black wool toward her sister; the ball then tumbles into the water and away. It would take a second viewing though to comment with confidence on all that actually happens in the film - narrative clarity is secondary to the nomadic wandering of the tribe, and above all to the film's impeccable visual design. Presumably enjoyed by western audiences mainly as a cultural digression; a lush window into another world, but I wonder how many of us are equipped to see through that window clearly.

The most enchanting movie I have seen in a long time. Visually stunning and breathtaking, like a trip to a museum that is rich with colorful paintings. Many beautifully chanted songs and little dialog. The best Iranian movie I have seen. And on an international level, it's the most artistic, yet not boring. The story comes out in colors, songs, and little dialog (suitable for those who don't like reading sub-titles).

This movie marries a fiction story with a documentary about a tribe and their tradition to make Gabbeh, a hand-woven carpet. The screenplay is very original and unusual -- in a good way. It definitely does not follow the clear-cut Hollywood recipe. This might confuse some viewers but this movie would be seen as a gem by other viewers who enjoy creativity.

Is it racist to insist that this is the most beautiful film I have ever seen? I say racist, because much of what is 'merely' beautiful to me is part of a rich symbolic texture I couldn't always get; concentrating on aesthetics may seem to rob a film of its political force. That it has such force is proven by its being banned in its country of origin - Makhmalbaf's hiding behind allegory cannot disguise his impassioned analysis of poverty, the oppressiveness of tradition or the loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. This is a film full of nature's marvel, yet shows how 'nature' is often used to justify social repression - as the teacher's lesson demonstrates, if the creation of the gabbeh (an ornamental, narrative carpet) is art in nature's image, than nature (and the rules it inspires) is merely a recreation of ours.