The director of the acclaimed 1985 Iranian film 'The Runner' returns with an even more bleak (and in some ways more impressive) feature, pitting a lone boy (the same young actor from the earlier film, still running) against all the implacable fury of nature. The title provides an explicit description of the elemental simplicity of the story, following the young protagonist on his futile search for his missing family somewhere in a storm-swept desert, where he encounters only wild dogs, dry wells, mummified cattle, abandoned villages, and small, isolated groups of wandering nomads.
The word harsh doesn't begin to describe the experience: close-ups are infrequent, dialogue is sparse, and the palette of colors rarely breaks free of windblown grays and browns. There is at least a horrible beauty to all the desolation, and an undeniable power behind each image, but only the hardiest viewers will be able to endure all 74 slow minutes of it. Don't expect any relief from the unrelenting, wind-torn landscape, and be forewarned: the film's ambiguous non-ending leaves its young hero's fate a mystery.
The word harsh doesn't begin to describe the experience: close-ups are infrequent, dialogue is sparse, and the palette of colors rarely breaks free of windblown grays and browns. There is at least a horrible beauty to all the desolation, and an undeniable power behind each image, but only the hardiest viewers will be able to endure all 74 slow minutes of it. Don't expect any relief from the unrelenting, wind-torn landscape, and be forewarned: the film's ambiguous non-ending leaves its young hero's fate a mystery.