Gomgashtei dar Aragh (2002)

Director:

Bahman Ghobadi

Writer:

Bahman Ghobadi (writer)

Release Date:

29 May 2003 (Germany)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Hope is eternal.

Plot:

During the war between Iran and Iraq, a group of Iranian Kurd musicians set off on an almost impossible mission...

Plot Keywords:

Oppression | Kurd | Kurdistan | Iraq | Iran

Awards:

5 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Shahab Ebrahimi	...	Mirza
Faegh Mohamadi	...	Barat
Allah-Morad Rashtian	...	Audeh
Rojan Hosseini	...	Rojan
Saeed Mohammadi	...	The Teacher
Iran Ghobadi	...	Hanareh
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mariam Pouyani
Hossein Rashid-Ghamat
Fathollah Sa'edi
Bahram Sarbazi

Also Known As:

Avazhayé sarzaminé madariyam (Iran: Persian title) (working title)
Marooned in Iraq (International: English title)
Songs of My Motherland (International: English title)

Runtime:

France:108 min (Cannes Film Festival)

Country:

Iran

Language:

Persian | Kurdish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Brazil:Livre | Malaysia:U | Norway:11

Company:

Mij Film Co.

window on the world

While I'm glad I rented this, I'm not sure I would recommend it to any of my friends or family. That being said, if you were already thinking about renting this you likely should.

Although it might be nice for non-Farsi speakers to wait until there is a DVD available with a commentary track. I found myself curious about both how the film was made, as to what was the significance of various elements of the film.

There's a very poetic sequence showing Audeh's wives and daughters building bricks...that may just be to help underscore a theme of oppression of women in Iran here...but it seemed like something more was going on.

Is there significance to Mirza's class conducted in an upside down dumpster? To where Barat urinates, while eyeing...well, really "earing" his dream girl??

As one reviewer here already commented...the men seem to be screaming at most times (even when not riding on the back of a truck, or a motorcycle built for three...). Is that culture, comedy or a constraint of sound recording in Iran? Or perhaps a combination of all three.

We do see early on a 60's style projected backdrop and there is a fight scene that again could be comical, or reflect the fact that there are no stuntmen available for such a production?

The story itself, an odyssey, works for me. And I bought into the curiosity of what Hanareh needed from Mirza...but as you can see my curiosity was not confined strictly to what the film presented. Maybe that would be a minus for some?

There is a nice 19 minute commentary from Ghobadi (with subtitles) on the DVD. His comments about the common place cruelty of war paired with comedy and music, along with an aphorism about the collective weight of Bush, Blair, Saddam and so forth compared to the weight of all the people involved were interesting; moreso his comments about the images in the film (large expanses of snowy white dwarfing his actors, unruly and unrespected barbed borders).

For me this was a welcome window on the world...here's to a better one without mass graves.

6/10

PS Apologies (to all 3 of you) for the past few reviews of mine that had annoying line breaks in them. Look out for spaces at the end of lines (at least on the browser I've been using recently).