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18 of 18 found the following review helpful:
 Another masterpiece from KiarostamiSep 11, 2005
By Chris Stolz
Abbas Kiarostami is surely one of the top talents in cinema anywhere. For those accustomed to Hollywood, Bollywood or European movies, his work will seem deceptively simple and slow. Eschewing professional actors, special effects, top-40 and world music soundtracks, complicated make-up and massive advertising campaigns, Kiarostami makes films that unfold into an extraordinaray philosophical complexity that is firmly and compassionately anchored in day-to-day human experience.
In "The WInd WIll Carry Us," a man from Teheran moves to a small village in order to do a job for his employer. His exact mission is unclear. He has hilarious trouble with his cell phone, flirts with a milkmaid, watches the slow and subtle rhythms of village life, and sometimes does nothing.
It is a testament to Kiarostami's perception and skill that the film-- despite its simple story and slow pacing-- is utterly captivating and complex. The film's title comes from an old Persian love poem that the protagonist quotes during his flirtation:
"In the courtyard, the wind is about to meet the leaves."
The sexual allusion here is also a philosophical one, as the protagonist seems to be waiting for some kind of chemical reaction, something to shake him up and lift him. How this moment of awakening will come is the film's subject, and Kiarostami leads us to it the way life does-- indirectly. We must watch, and look, and SEE, what is happening in the village-- and in the contrast between the protagonist's frantic running after his phone calls and the village's slow and deliberate movement toward the film's climactic ritual emerge its meaning.
Kiarostami's cinematography is simple and effective. He makes superb use of Iran's fall colours-- gold and brown-- and rural dust and emptiness. The simplest scenes-- a man buy cooking oil, women walking-- are fascinating in their wealth of simple detail, and the film's subtle yet powerful climax ends with an unforgettable image of a humerus (thigh bone) drifting in the river.
If life is what happens while we are busy making other plans-- and if art is what happens while we are busy having expectations of film genres-- the Kiarostami's masterwork is living art indeed.
20 of 23 found the following review helpful:
The New World and the OldNov 02, 2003
By Doug Anderson
Plot summary: Film crew travels to remote village to document a death ritual. Once in the village, however, they find the deathly ill woman has not perished yet and so they settle in and wait. Each day they enquire about the old womans health and each day the news is different. The focus is on one member of the crew and how he slowly acclimates himself to the villagers, to nature, and to time as he waits for an event that may or may not occur. This is my second Abbas Kiorastami film. I recently saw Close Up and after seeing this one I want to see all of his films. Kiorastami is a film maker for people who want something unique. Hollywood is all about stating the obvious and Kiorastami is all about subtlety. Most films work by speeding things up and meeting expectations but Kiorastami works by slowing things down and subverting expectations. In CLOSE UP an out-of-work man with a family to support pretends to be a famous director and befriends a wealthy family who believes he truly is the director. As time passes the family begins to suspect that he may not be who he says he is. It is an intimate study of human relationships and how relationships develop to fulfill a mutual need. When the family finds out the man is merely an imposter they are angry at first and they take him to court but then as they listen to his reasons for pretending they forgive him and at films end we see that the friendship will resume. It is an examination of how relationships form and also an examination of society and how society shapes the way we relate to and see each other. THE WIND WILL CARRY US is another version of this story but instead of the poor man befriending the rich it is about a city dweller befriending village folk. The city dweller finds himself treating the villagers like an object for study because that is his training as a film maker but the villagers just quietly go about their business allowing the city dweller to do his thing. The villagers are a community who all rely on each other and the city dweller is facinated by how the villagers take care of each other. He relies on them for all his practical needs like food and lodging but also for his social needs as well. As he tries to communicate with various villagers we can see that he is trying to make a connection with life that has so far been denied him in the city. The city dweller is the kind of man who quotes poetry freely but for him life is abstract whereas for the villagers life is real. Thus his fascination with them. For the first time in his life he finds himself looking at nature, at life, and at people up close. Its a very long film with lots of quiet stretches but that is Kiorastami's style--instead of hurrying you along from one scene to the next he allows you to occupy each scene and feel life not in film time but in real time. Once you surrender to the style you begin to feel its magisterial effect. CLOSE UP was kind of grainy and low budget (though still a great film) but this film is state of the art. Truly pristine cinematography. I highly recommend both films.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
The Feeling of TimeOct 01, 2005
By J_J_Gittes
Saw the film again after three years, and it`s lyrical beauty was even more obvious than the first time. The title is taken from a poem, and when it is recited, in the darkness of a cave, one can feel all the beauty that surrounds us, even if we don`t always see it.
The Film is about a man who has an inner struggle, but doesn`t want to see it. Only at the end of the film he aknowledges it, though he can`t solve it. The small village he came to, 700 miles away from Teheran, awakens his senses, his lust for life, even though he came looking for death. When in the end the old woman dies, it is totally unexpected, and it doesn`t really matter anymore. Maybe he will stay, maybe he will go, but he is changed.
Life needs living says this film, almost shouts it in your face, but with such warmth of breath, that you go with it. Along with the estranged character the viewer starts to rediscover the world, if he pays attention, and out of the endless flow of time, compassion starts to arise, compassion for the flowers, the trees, the earth, and the people, with all their beauty and shortcomings.
The worst disease is death says a character in the film, when we`ll have to leave this earth. One day, the wind will carry us away.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Unique and Fascinating Cultural ExperienceJan 19, 2007
By Rebecca Johnson
"The Rebecca Review"
I loved "The Wind Will Carry Us" for many reasons. First, there are two story lines, one is what is happening on the physical plane and the other is a representation of two ideas and ways of living.
The main plot is fairly basic. A man goes to a small village (Siah Dareh) built up against a barren mountainside. This alone is fascinating as you observe a culture and how the people live their daily lives. One of the main things that keeps happening throughout the movie is a cell phone ringing.
Each time the phone rings, the engineer from Tehran (Behzad Dourani) has to get into his car and drive up to higher ground. This is interesting because each time he does this something new happens. It almost becomes a little comical, but the funniest part for me was the relationship between the husband and wife in the teashop. I was amused at how similar relationships are in all cultures and how men and women form a deep bond all while withstanding the daily conflicts seeking to drive us apart.
The movie felt very realistic and didn't seem to follow a script. I loved that aspect and also the conversations between the characters had real heart. Instead of "how are you," "I'm fine," they would say things about wishing each other a long life or luck or the most beautiful comment was about "being in your service." The conversations where very interesting and felt very natural, comforting and at times were profoundly beautiful.
There was a strong community aspect where everyone joined together to make life more pleasant. The care and concern of the villagers was profound and moving and made you wish to just go live in this village where people seemed to have made peace with a way of life they truly enjoyed.
I spent most of the time wondering why the engineer was there because I figured an engineer would be building something (although I did seem to understand that a tower was to be built - although the villagers were just digging a hole in the ground), but after reading the reviews, I can see why many think he may have been there to photograph a funeral (he was always carrying around a camera and talking to someone on the phone about a woman who was ill in the village), which makes much more sense. At first I thought he was bringing some sort of technology to the village, but in the end, this is more about how people choose to live.
If you would like to lose yourself in a movie about a faraway village and see how people live their daily lives, this has a lot to offer. I have a love/hate relationship with cell phones, so this movie was especially interesting to me.
~The Rebecca Review
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
this was a good introduction to Iranian cinemaJul 28, 2006
By Richard K. Woodward
I'm glad this was the first Iranian film I saw. I might have been put off if I had seen Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" or Samira Makhmalbaf's "Apple," but thanks to this film I began to acquire a taste for what is surely some of the most interesting filmmaking going on in recent years. One of the finest moments in the film is a subtly erotic moment when the protagonist recites the poem by Forugh Farrokhzad from which the film takes its name to a girl milking an animal (a goat? a cow?). (Farrokhzad - an Iranian feminist poetess who died at age 32 - is very interesting in her own right, and the introduction to her work is another thing I'm grateful to Kiarostami for.)
The pace and style are very similar to those of Gus Van Sant's recent films (e.g., "Gerry"). I personally find this very refreshing.
A minor point: many reviewers refer to "Arabs." In a time when so much is going on in the Middle East, this kind of ignorance is very irritating. Since when is Iran an Arab country? The people depicted are mostly Kurds.
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