The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
"Bad ma ra khahad bord" (original title)

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

Director:

Abbas Kiarostami

Writer:

Abbas Kiarostami

Stars:

Behzad Dorani, Noghre Asadi, Roushan Karam Elmi

4 wins & 4 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Behzad Dorani	...	Engineer
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Noghre Asadi
Roushan Karam Elmi
Bahman Ghobadi
Shahpour Ghobadi
Reihan Heidari
Masood Mansouri
Ali Reza Naderi
Frangis Rahsepar
Masoameh Salimi
Farzad Sohrabi
Lida Soltani

Storyline

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

---

Plot Keywords:

village | iran | film crew | tortoise | tradition | 

---

Genres:

Drama

---

Details

Country:

Iran France

Language:

Persian

Release Date:

24 November 1999 (France)

Also Known As:

The Wind Will Carry Us

Filming Locations:

Siah Dareh, Iran

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$21,417 (USA) (28 July 2000)

Gross:

$213,253 (USA) (24 November 2000)

Company Credits

Production Co:

MK2 Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

118 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 1999 (#02).

---

Goofs

When the engineer is driving back from the mountain, he stops and picks up someone who is walking down the road and starts talking to him, but when the camera shows the car from long shot for the first time, there is no one in the car other than the engineer.

---

Quotes

Engineer: Hurry up get in.
Farzad: I can't come now.
Engineer: Why?
Farzad: I need one more answer for the exam.
Engineer: What is it?
Farzad: The fourth question.
Engineer: You don't know the answer?
Farzad: No.
Engineer: Why?
Farzad: Because I don't.
[...]

---

Connections

Featured in Chaplin Today: The Kid (2003)

User Reviews

A mystery film in more ways than one.

'The Wind Will Carry Us' is above all a detective story in its purest form, about the desire to know. This act of enquiry is extended to both the recording gaze of the camera and that something else emanating in the film's figurative language, the prevalance of natural objects that are what they are - trees, bridges, turtles, the wind, the river etc. - but also something else, something beautifully expressed, but only partially glimpsed, in the quotations from scripture and poetry that run through the film, from that gorgeous description at the beginning of trees as being greener than God's dreams, to the closing image of the hurled bone carried by the rapid stream down goat-chomping banks.

Such an image may remind Western viewers of Kubrick or Renoir. This is the large 'problem' with the film; rather, the problem of any viewer confronting any artwork from an alien culture. I was thinking of not even going to 'Wind', in spite of Kiarostami's reputation as THE director of the 1990s, and the fact that I loved 'Close-Up'. Early reviews made it seem dispiritingly forbidding, and who wants to go to a film if you have to read a ten-page article in 'Cineaste' to understand it? This kind of 'praise' is ultimately detrimental to the films - do we really 'get' Mizoguchi, Ray or Paradjanov films in their entirety either?

I won't lie: it's frustrating watching a film full of obviously symbolic moments that I can't grasp because I am culturally ignorant: the last ten minutes especially are baffling in their move to the ritual or abstract. The risk is to transpose Iranian figuration to their Western meanings, and thus dilute them. But, the film, as Kiarostami's are reputed to, unearth the universal through concentration on the culturally specific (although I've always found 'universality' a dubious aim).

Like I say, the film is a detective story, and if we can't solve the figurative, or metaphysical clues (although most of the poems are clear and lovely and resonant), there are other mysteries, both for the viewer and the main character. Who are these disembodied voices we hear but cannot see guiding us through a landscape at once natural, historical, poetic, social and religiously symbolic? Why have they come to this particular village? Why does the hero keep asking about this particular woman, and why does another woman keep ringing him on his borrowed mobile? Who are his shadowy companions?

Our bewilderment is shared by the 'modern' protagonist, who has to negotiate this seemingly medieval landscape with the aid of a guide (there are many fairy tale motifs throughout, from the forking roads and car breaking down, to the man getting trapped in a hole of his own making, reminding us that Iran was one of the fertile stages for the 'Arabian Nights').

This film may mean most to Iranians and pseuds, but will surely be resonant to anyone who's read Beckett, or been simply burdened with humanity - the constant waiting for something inexplicable to happen; the unseen, insistent powers that determine everything; the gallows humour of the only clear signal for a mobile phone being in a cemetary. The amazing thing about Kiarostami's famed (almost Borgesian) formalism and his metaphors is the way they arise so naturally from the realistic environment he's portraying, almost so you'd miss them - you have to look hard for the traces, the lines, the paralells, the repetitions, the angles, the reflections, the complex use of point of view that often seems literally god-like, and is of ambiguous attribution. Above all, it is a funny, engrossing, unsentimental look at people we rarely see on screen.