70: The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad ma ra Khahad Bord – Original Persian title)

            Like most films by its director, Abbas Kiarostami, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) is an enigma.  Upon its conclusion it was difficult to determine if I liked it because I was unsure of what I had just seen. It’s the way I feel at the end of most Kiarostami films.  His pictures are deliberately paced to allow reflection, and still I find myself confused by what they show me.  Sometimes this is frustrating, as with his Close-up (1990), which I wanted to like, and thought I understood, until its lack of structure and character development became infuriating.  Sometimes it is enlightening, as with Taste of Cherry (1997), in which the structure is so simple that the characters have almost nothing to do but develop, and still they hold back.  In both films, men are committed to plans which go awry, and while this is not uncommon in the movies, Kiarostami handles it in a way few other writers and directors would dare to attempt.

            Most films are about the process of choice.  Characters are introduced, they are faced with conflict, and they are forced to choose how they will respond to adversity.  Kiarostami’s films follow no such pattern.  In his pictures the choices have already been made, and he concerns himself not with the process, but with the aftermath of these decisions.  In Close-up, a man has chosen to impersonate Kiarostami’s contemporary Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and gains entry into a plush Teheran estate by claiming to be interested in using the home for a location on his next film.* In Taste of Cherry a cab driver has chosen to commit suicide at the end of his shift.  In neither film do we see the character’s decision being made, nor are we given background information as to why or how they arrived at this point.  Kiarostami simply focuses on what happens after they’ve made their choices.

            The Wind will Carry Us is much the same way.  A man (Behzad Dorani) claiming to an engineer arrives in a remote village with a small crew of workers.  He tells a local boy that they are treasure hunters, hoping the facetious statement will cause the villagers to mind their own business.  He and his crew find lodging at a boarding house and begin to wait for an event.  The engineer plays tourist for several days, asking the boy about the village and searching for a place to drink tea.  He tries to take pictures, but the local women do not like to be photographed.  He spends weeks at the boarding house, arguing with his crew about why they have to stay.  He shaves, and tries to find fresh milk, and answers an endless string of calls on a cell phone. 

To get reception he has to drive to the top of a high hill outside of the village.  The procedure of getting down to his car and then driving up the hill becomes tedious.  Mirroring this tedium is another procedure.  A man at the top of the hill is digging a hole.  He shouts up from the chasm, telling the engineer first that it is a well and then that it is for municipal purposes.  Neither explanation seems plausible

            Through hearing only half of the phone conversations we learn slowly that the engineer is waiting for an elderly woman in the village to die.  He has been sent by someone to photograph the strange funeral ritual that is local custom.  While he waits for the one death, a call comes that inform him of another – possibly of a relative, we never know. 

Through conversations with villagers which seem meaningless, the engineer learns little by little about the ritual and about the health of the dying woman.  When she takes a turn for the better his crew wants to pack it in, but he is committed to waiting.  More phone calls come, and up on the hill he develops a connection to the man in the hole, seemingly as committed to digging as he himself is to waiting.  By chance he is on the hill when the hole caves in, nearly killing the digger.  He races to tell the residents at the village about the accident, and miraculously the digger is able to be saved.  Had it not been for a phone call, he might have been trapped for days. 

            After an unseen rescue, the engineer rides back to the village on the back of the local doctor’s motorcycle.  Shots from this scene have become an enduring image of this film, and indeed the sweeping cinematography is beautiful.  Upon arriving, the engineer finds that his crew has left, and he resigns to leave himself.  Just before he drives away he snaps a few shots of the local women, beginning to parade for a funeral.  Whose funeral it is, we never know.

            Like Kiarostami’s other films The Wind Will Carry Us is a mystery to me.  It is purposefully and methodically slow – a good structure for a film about waiting – but I’m not sure that Kiarostami didn’t overdo it.  Yes this picture is aesthetically beautiful, but I can’t say that I got anything out of it emotionally.  Perhaps something is lost in translation.** I am certain about one thing.  This film is about patience and loneliness.  It is telling that we never see the members of the crew or the man in the hole. Is it possible that they are figments of the engineer’s imagination?  Not likely, but interesting to consider.  Still, for all intents and purposes the engineer is alone in the film, save for the small talk that he makes with villagers about tea and milk, and the conversations he has with the boy.  He does speak briefly to the local teacher, but this dialogue serves more so as the film’s only expositional sequence than as a moment of human connection.

In this and other films, Kiarostami seems to be saying that our choices, once made, often isolate us.  We make decisions that prevent us from connecting with other people, and this is only natural.  We isolate ourselves based on beliefs and actions, and these choices effect us in ways we can rarely foresee.  I find Kiarostami’s films difficult because the audience is challenged to understand the choices a character has already made.  This is not wrong (audiences should be challenged by films), but it is different, and I don’t believe that it always works.  Once choices have been made much of the drama in a typical film seems to be over.  In a way, Kiarostami is only concerned with third acts, and this can be hard to swallow because the desire for rising tension is so natural.  The Wind Will Carry Us has little in the way of rising tension.  Instead it features the logical result of a decision made.

 Like our choices, Kiarostami’s films tend to divide viewers.  Audiences and critics have been split on his latest work, Certified Copy (2010), with much debate concerning a decision its two protagonists may or may not have made before its plot unfolds.  Though I don’t always love Kiarostami’s pictures I am intrigued by this debate and will admit that I’m eager to see that film.  As for The Wind will Carry Us, I’m left feeling a bit cheated.

Language: Persian

Runtime: 118 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com  

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

*An event that actually occurred, as legitimate footage of the ensuing trial makes up much of the film’s second half.

**This is likely, as several reviews I’ve read had rather different interpretations of what happens during the film.  Some reviewers are supremely confident that the dying woman in the village is a relative of the engineer, and make little note of the phone call that appears to be about another family member’s death.