November 16–23, 2000
movie shorts
The Wind Will Carry Us
recommended
The frustrating thing about watching the ever-increasing (but still feeble) trickle of films from Iran is the sense that you’re being exposed to only the slightest part of a rich and complicated tradition. Of course, that’s also the exciting thing, as it leaves so much to be discovered. Example: Who knew Abbas Kiarostami had a sense of humor? With A Taste of Cherry, he came across as an existential poet, but The Wind Will Carry Us paints some of the same themes with a far more absurdist brush. Of course, we’re still talking about existential poetic humor. The film’s hero (Behzad Dourani) is a telecommunications engineer (or at least he says he is) sent to a remote village for reasons that only gradually become clear (and even then remain obscure). Not surprisingly, most of the film has to do with communication, the way people form bonds or (mostly) fail to. When the engineer gets a call on his cell phone, he immediately starts running to higher ground, all the while yelling "Don’t hang up!" Eventually, he jumps into his car, drives uphill to what proves to be a cemetery, and finally gets a good connection. His first words: "I told you not to call me!" By then, enough time has passed that his response sounds less like a punchline and more like a cosmic twist of fate, and Wind is full of such elongated ironies, often filmed in extreme long shot or spoken by off-camera characters. Truthfully, Kiarostami overplays his hand at times, drawing out (and repeating) sequences to the point where even the creator might get a little antsy. But his style remains so rich and unique that there’s pleasure in every pregnant pause.
