The Wind Will Carry Us (Film)

1999. Dir: Abbas Kiarostami.



Context:
Based on a story by Mahmud Aydin (who is he?).

The film is set in Iranian Kurdistan, and was followed by a couple more interesting films set in that region: Blackboards by Samira Makhmalbaf, and A Time for Drunken Horses, by Bahman Ghobadi, who actually was Kiarostami's AD on The Wind Will Carry Us and cameos as Yusuf. The Kurdish setting of this film is seen as some as an indirect political statement, recognising Kurdish existence by going to film there. Kiarostami, as is usually the case for him, has been far more guarded when asked about any direct political intentions. However the trip to a region that was new both for his films and to him personally, will mirror the trip made by the main character Behzad and hence deepen the autobiographical resonance (see further down) of the film. In some sense this trip, by the character and by Kiarostami, also figure as a reworking of Life and Nothing More.

The shoot itself was problematic, partly due to difficulties communicating with the reticent locals and due to conflict between Kiarostami and his DP Mahmud Kalari. Post-production was no less stressful, taking nine months, and Kiarostami has said that he was even close to abandoning the project at some point.



The Film:

Like so many other Kiarostami films, this is a journey of self-discovery, though a slow, unexpectedly tortuous one, for the character of Behzad. As usual there is a 'guide' to this journey, in the character of the doctor (a pir, an initiating teacher: see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pir_%28Sufism%29), who arrives after the accident of the gravedigger reawakens a sense of solidarity within Behzad. He offers to Behzad a new perspective and outlook onto the world and life (and he also recites an Omar Khayyam quatrain).

Kiarostami has himself stated that the doctor's advice to 'open the eyes of the heart as wide as those of the body' as the central theme of the film.

Like in many other of his films, set in rural Iran, the nature and countryside of these rural regions have a special meaning to Kiarostami which he moulds into a symbolic setting, transcending its actual material limitations. They represent something to him, closely tied to his deep love of nature and contemplating it (c.f. his photography), and this is partly why he used it as a setting so many times. (Think of a very loose analogy, like what Mexico represent to Peckinpah, an idyllic oasis and a paradise lost, but of course in his films far removed from any real Mexico).

We are not provided with all the information we usually expect from a narrative, but instead have to construct meaning from what little we do see and hear.

It is also a film about the gaze and the re-education of the gaze (ties in with the camera being used as 'mirror' during shaving scene and the autobiographical elements, and Behzad's outlook being altered, and the final scene where Behzad washes his car's windscreen - his vision of the world has now been 'purified').

The final shot then follows the bone thrown by Behzad, as it flows down the stream (mirroring the rolling apple earlier, and perhaps referenced in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), resonating with the ideas of cycles of life and nature. Of course, via the title, it also carries a resonance with the poetry of Omar Khayyam, where all things eventually turning into dust is a recurring motif.

Poetry plays an even more prevalent role in this film than in earlier Kiarostami works, with actual poems and passages being recited or referred to, namely the works of Omar Khayyam, Shohab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad (from whom the title of the film is taken). The sensualist poetry of Farrokhad, especially of the poem 'The Wind Will Carry Us' from her anthology 'Rebirth', ties in well with the strands of Khayyam's poetry Kiarostami uses to flesh out his themes here. Her poem implies we should make the most of life, take as much pleasure out of it while we can, before the cycle of all things inevitable comes to fly us away, like leaves, from the tree we thought we were rooted to. Behzad then himself recites Farrokhad's poetry, to the girl, down in the cellar.

In this film Kiarostami self-consciously tackles the issue of film directors, from a more urban, 'sophisticated' world, coming to spend time in a rural region they don't fully understand (and in the case of Behzad make no effort to) with only the single-minded aim of shooting a film and then going home. Kiarostami addressed this also, in more or less direct ways, in films like Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees. In the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum: "the particular ethics of The Wind Will Carry Us consist largely of Kiarostami reflecting on his own practice as a 'media person' exploiting poor people: Behzad may be the closest thing in Kiarostami's work to a critical self-portrait, at least... since The Report. ... Kiarostami is critiquing the whole premise of his film-making from an ethical standpoint"[from Rosenbaum piece on this film published in Chicago Reader]. Kiarostami has himself admitted an autobiographical element in this film [interview with Thierry Jousse and Serge Toubiana].





Reception:
The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Domestically however, and unsurprisingly, it faced the usual censorship problems.






References/Resources:
http://www.asharperfocus.com/Wind.html