zetes Review of The Wind Will Carry Us

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)

Beautiful, enigmatic, and haunting masterwork from one of today's leading filmmakers

[10/10 · 9 April 2003]

SPOILERS. A man (Behzad Dourani) comes to a rural town with his crew to document the bizarre funeral ceremony of the locals. He has heard that an old woman is about three days from death. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the woman keeps getting better, keeping Dourani and his crew stuck there. The person who is funding him pesters him constantly by calling his cell phone. Since he can only get the signal when on the highest point of the area, he must jump in his car and race to the top of a hill. There's a nice strain of black humor running through the movie. Dourani obviously can't kill the woman, but when a young boy tells him about the purpose of some bowls of soup the locals are offering her – if she eats the soup you made, you get your wish – we can almost hear him thinking what his wish would be. The comedy shifts to philosophy in the second half of the picture, where the nature of life and its relationship with death is explored. When on the top of the hill, Dourani kicks a tortoise onto its back and leaves it for dead. After he leaves, we see it rock itself back over onto its feet. Later, he helps save another man's life and then brings the doctor who has shown up to help the dying old woman (the crew had been there for over two weeks at this point). The doctor has a lot of dialogue (`We don't want to let go of this life because we know how beautiful this world is. No one has come back from the other side and proved that it is better there.') which comes dangerously close to the kind of third-act speech which ruined, in my opinion, Kiarostami's previous film, A Taste of Cherry. But perhaps I can accept the doctor's message easier because the director has succeeded in demonstrating just how wonderful the world is. The film is absolutely gorgeous, capturing some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Much like my very favorite Kiarostami film, Where Is the Friend's Home?, the culture and people of this isolated area is painted by the director's brush. 10/10.