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By:
JBR
Abbas Kiarostami is one of the important people who diverted the attention of film lovers the world over to Iranian films. Born in 1940 in Tehran he started his career as a graphic designer. His film career began in 1969 with a documentary for the duration of only 12 minutes.
Some of his films that built a reputation for Abbas Kiarostami are: 'Taste of Cherry,' 'Where is the friends Home,' 'Through the Olive Trees,' 'Close up,' 'Life and nothing more' and 'Ten.'
His plot locales are the villages surrounding Tehran. He prefers the village folks as actors in his films. His reasons are, "Ordinary folks work well under simple communication and they easily give expression to that. They don't treat acting as a profession."
Abbas Kiarostami's films are simple in presentation yet reflect deeper emotions. Simple events that are rejected as unfit for films in the first sight become the driving force in his films. That such events seldom fail to fundamentally guide life, highlights his artistic abilities.
The mention of Abbas Kiarostami's name would bring children to the mind of his fans. Rare are directors who could project the world of children realistically like him. He confesses to his weakness to work with children. Children express themselves realistically in front of the camera. He feels children don't work for fame or money.
He applies his natural ability to introduce new techniques in his films. The film 'Through the Olive Trees' was produced like a documentary. Though the look of the film appeared like a documentary, there was surprisingly no trace of dryness that one usually associates with a documentary film.
The film 'Ten' was taken in a moving car. Would any one other than Abbas Kiarostami dare to shoot a close up of a young boy for 15 minutes continuously in the same angle!
'The wind will carry us' is a film that fully reflects his artistic abilities. The film begins with a shot of a jeep raising a cloud of dust on a serpentine road over a series of hills bereft of trees. What can be seen on the screen is the long shot of the moving jeep and the audio of a conversation between two people. They are on their way to a village called Siah Dareh that is quite a long way from Tehran. After a while a boy leads them to the village proper. Among the three, the audience sees only one. The village folks refer him to as the engineer. The purpose of the visit is never communicated in the film.
In the village of Siah Dareh, a woman who has crossed 100 years is in her deathbed. The purpose of the visit by the engineer and the group is to film the final ceremony. The audience is led to conjecture this from the events in the film and never once was this mentioned as the reason in the film. It is a long drawn death. In the meantime the events that involve the engineer and the village folks and the relationship with the boy who guided them create an unexplained intimacy with the village of Siah Dareh.
As the death happens, the engineer prepares to leave the village. The old woman's demise also is not defined in the film. The events in the film guide the audience to a tentative conclusion.
There is a general belief that good stories make good films. A good director is the one who bring out the essence of the story through the scenes, simple and understandable dialogues and kindle the emotions in the audience and take them to a higher plane. Only the incidents become the central theme that moves the story in such creations. In a way, the story is nothing other than a gathering of incidents. Let us take the example of 'Gilli.' In this film when Prakashraj is forcibly taking away Trisha, he confronts Vijay. It is just an incident. What would have happened to the story if this confrontation did not happen, i.e. if Vijay had not come there? It is difficult to speculate. The incidents that follow this confrontation, i.e. Vijay's rescue of Trisha, Prakashraj's visit to Chennai are simply the outcome of one incident. Even if one event were removed, the story would have collapsed like house of cards.
On the contrary, incidents don't go to make the story in the film 'The wind will carry us.' In fact, the incidents in the film do not lend themselves to shape a story in the film. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to raise the question, 'What if Vijay had not turned up?' The reason is that the incidents do not shape the story and the events are complete and do not depend on other incidents.
But then, what kind of experience could a story-less film give the audience? That is the challenge Abbas Kiarostami has taken on himself in this film.
Siah Dareh is a small village, located on a hillock in the midst of hills, dwellings made of bricks and cement mortar, the simple folks of the village, narrow lanes, domestic cattle, the golden yellow crops that sway to the winds and the dusty roads projected through the film make the audience to build an emotional bondage with the village. The film does not lack interesting scenes. Let us see one of them.
The engineer's cell phone does not receive the signals properly in the village. For him to use his cell phone, he has to take a ride in his jeep to the hillock where the village cemetery is situated. Every time the engineer gets a call, he has to go through this routine. This repeated scene brings a rhythm to the film.
Near the cemetery, a worker is busy digging a long and narrow trench for the telephone department. Whenever the engineer comes there he gets to talk to him. But, the face of the worker is never shown in the film. Finally when he falls in the trench and is carried by the villages in the engineer's jeep, only his legs are shown.
The engineer gets into conversation with a woman selling tea. He tells her that he had never seen a woman serving food, meaning that women don't serve food in hotels. The woman asks his if his parents were alive.
"Yes."
"Then who serves food to your father?"
"Mother."
"How then would you say that you have never seen a woman serving food?"
The engineer tenders an apology.
The engineer then goes to a house to bring milk. That is where the fiancée of the worker in the cemetery lived. She is just 16. The cow is tethered in a dark place. Just the legs of the woman who comes with a lantern are shown. The face is now seen. The engineer recites the poem of the famous Iranian poet Furugh Farrukhzad as the woman is milking the cow. The line "The wind will carry us" is part of that poem.
The critics feel that Abbas Kiarostami has brought that poem into life in this film.
On the surface the film is just about waiting for death. The doctor who appears in the final part of the film also talks of death. When the engineer says that death is cruel, the doctor tells the engineer that old age is unkind. "Death separates us for ever from nature, the marvels and the endless beauty of things." The doctor concludes that beyond all other activities, it is enjoyable to observe nature.
The village of Siah Dareh and the surrounding landscape take a life of their own in the hands of Abbas Kiarostami who presents nature's beauty in all its splendour to the audience.
In the first shot a lone tree at a distance is used as an indicator of the location of the three passengers in the car. The audience also takes that cue and directs its attention towards that tree.
In another shot the engineer calls out to a man riding a motorcycle. A small hillock prevents him from hearing the call. The camera starts following the noise of the motorcycle on the other side of the hillock. After some time the rider comes to the focus of the audience.
The engineer driving his jeep crosses the entry to the village on way to the cemetery. At the entry point the jeep drops out of view of the audience. But the same shot continues for some time. But in seconds the disappeared jeep re-appears in view far away on the road. Such shots and scenes go to inform the audience of the village and the terrain surrounding it. In the final scene when the doctor mentions the finality of death, the impressions gathered about the village and surroundings virtually inspire the audience towards nature.
The highlight of this 118-minute long film is that only in the last three minutes they have mixed the background music. In the rest of the film, the sound is supplied by nature.
It won't be an exaggeration to say that Abbas Kiarostami's film 'The wind will carry us' is a wholesome creation of beauty.
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-09.08.2006
