Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ (Papu Rajowar)
“I don’t mind if someone dozes off while watching one of my films so long as they dream about it
later!”- Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami is perhaps the most celebrated Iranian filmmaker whose works found much critical acclaim in the west winning various awards in the major film festivals of Cannes or Venice. He is known for films like ‘Where is the Friend’s Home‘, ‘Through The Olive Trees‘, ‘The Taste of Cherry‘, ‘Certified Copy’ etc. His film “The Wind Will Carry Us” had won the Special Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the Venice Film Festival (1999) after which he decided to stop submitting his films in any competition at film festivals, winning nearly fifty film festival prizes by then. Kiarostami is known for his metaphoric use of images and symbols to carry forward his philosophy which at the same time also made his work difficult to watch. ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ is one of such films.
Before going to discuss the film let’s look at the plot. A group of documentary filmmakers from Tehran arrives in a small remote village in Iranian Kurdistan to film the funeral of a dying one-hundred-year-old lady where the mourning village women would do self-mutilation following a rare ritual still performed in that area. The protagonist Behzad, befriends the young boy Farzad, the grandson of the old lady and waits for the death of the old lady whose health gets better day by day. Behzad has to climb many times to the highest point, the cemetery of the mountainous village to answer his calls from Tehran, where he meets a working ditch digger, Yousuf. Behzad’s talks with Yousuf makes him so curious about Yousuf’s secret love affair with Zeynab that he later goes on to meet her in the village. He returns to the cemetery only to find that the assignment has been cancelled by the producer in Tehran. Behzad sees Yousuf accidentally buried in the deep hole he was digging and rushes to the village for help and offers his car to take Yousuf to the hospital. He returns to the village with the doctor who comes to check the health of the old lady. He learns that his crewmen have left. Behzad offers to bring the medicine for the old lady prescribed by the doctor and goes with him to meet Yousuf at the hospital. The next morning the old lady dies and he leaves the village.
Audience in search of Characters:
The plot shows that there is a narrative but when one watches the film it is hardly possible to grasp the narrative which happens to be too esoteric and absurd. The narrative reminds us the absurd world of Camus when we find Behzad, the protagonist, waiting idly in the village for the death of the grand old lady and only engaging in the Sisyphus like work of moving up and down the mountain taking his heavy Land Rover several times to answer calls from his producer named Mrs Godarzi, who, perhaps is an allusion to Beckett’s ‘Godot’ as we never see or hear her voice in the entire film. Once entering the village, Behzad and his crew members are left with no job other than waiting for the old lady’s death whose health gets better day by day making the outsiders frustrated. Without any work, Behzad roams around the village and his crewmen spend most of the time sleeping inside the room. The indication of nothing happening in the narrative was perhaps given in the long conversations of the crew members of the opening sequence of the film:
” We’re heading nowhere…. Going nowhere….”
The camera of the filmmaker also does not follow the familiar pattern of the film narrative making the film’s narrative seem very incomprehensible. Characters go speaking and they are not shown by the camera which focuses voluntarily on the listener’s reactions (mostly Behzad’s) or some other scenes and happenings and never comes towards the speakers. The audience gets to see the face of the protagonist Behzad only after listening and being familiar with his voice almost for the first ten minutes of the film. Behzad’s crew members are not seen at all in the entire length of the film except for once seen from the backside as Behzad’s car moves away leaving them on the road after a brief conversation with them. The dying grand old lady Mrs Malek around whom the whole narrative is based is never shown. The news of Mrs Malek’s health is given by Farzad to the protagonist who eagerly waits for her death. The ditch digger Yousuf working at the cemetery who has long talks with Behzad about life, love and death is only heard from inside the ditch he is digging. The two women who talk over a cell phone with Behzad, the producer Mrs Godarzi and Behzad’s wife are also never shown, in fact, their voices are also absent, the audience has to imagine their voices listening to the responses given by Behzad on the cell phone. Thus, in a way, Kiarostami breaks the traditional film narrative by not allowing the audience the audiovisual pleasure and providing them with a partial view only. There are almost eleven main characters, who control and shape the course of the narrative in the film, are never shown and only have been presented through their voices, which, in effect are so unique that the audience can visualise them with their imagination. Kiarostami did this quite intentionally and he explained this in one of his interviews in this way, “There are eleven people in this movie who are not visible. In the end, you know you haven’t seen them, but you feel you know they were and what they were about. I want to create the type of cinema that shows by not showing.”[1] Kiarostami’s intention of making an interactive cinema has left the film look incomplete. As it doesn’t offer a clear view of the story the audience find it too long a movie that comes to an end abruptly. Kiarostami’s approach of communicating without showing or limited view wants ‘completion through the creative spirit of the audience thus providing the film with the advantage of literature’.[2]
Use of Poetry in ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’:
‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ is set in the beautiful mountain village of Siah Dareh in Iranian Kurdistan which is about 450 miles away from Tehran. The film opens with the long shots of the zigzagging paths of the mountains with a lonely Land Rover at a distance disturbing the silence and creating a fume of dust while moving ahead. We hear the voice of the passengers who seem to be lost and one of them suggests looking for the ‘big tree’ following which they will reach the village. One of them then recites Sepehri’s lines from the poem:
“Where is the friend’s home”:
“before you get to the tree,
there’s a garden lane,
more green than god’s dream”
There are several instances of poetry recitation in the film. We find characters using poetry in their conversations, for example,
Behzad: “When you’re fated to be black…”
Farzad: “…Even holy water cannot whiten you.”
Behzad: How do you know that poem?
Farzad: Our teacher recites poems to us from time to time.
Behzad: For homework?
Farzad: No. He recites and I learn them.
We hear the protagonist Behzad reciting a poem by Forugh to Zeynab, the love interest of Yousuf in the dark cellar where she milks the cow for him. At first, Behzad quotes a few lines from the poem ‘The Gift’ by Forugh which appeared befitting with the dark condition of the cellar illumined by the little lamp:
Behzad: “If you come to my house, friend…“
Zeynab: What?
Behzad: “Bring me a lamp and a window I can look… Through at the crowd in the happy alley.”
Zeynab: What?
Behzad: Nothing, it was a poem.
Behzad: Do you know Forugh?
Zeynab: Yes
Behzad: Who is she?
Zeynab: Gohar’s daughter
Behzad: No, the one I’m talking about is a poet.
Behzad: Ok, I’ll recite a poem to you. It will occupy us as you milk.
As Zeynab becomes curious about the poet after listening to Behzad’s recitation of the poem “The Wind Will Carry Us” he tells her that the poet Forugh had studied till class four or five only and it doesn’t depend on one’s educational qualification. He further tells her that she too can write if she has the power of imagination. Farzad’s intention is ambiguous here, it is not shown clearly and we don’t know whether he genuinely wants her to write or he is just flirting with the girl. We are left with doubt as we hear him telling the girl that Yousuf works under him which certainly is a lie. (Behzad: I’m one of Yousuf’s friends. In fact, I’m his boss.)
The village doctor who comes to the cemetery to check the health of Yousuf after he has been rescued from the well offers Behzad a ride on his moped. He also quotes lines in praise of nature’s beauty from Persian poetry – Omar Khayyam particularly.
It may seem somewhat artificial to see many characters using poetry in their daily day to day conversations but according to Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa “poetry is so popular among Iranians that many literate people memorise verses by Hafiz, Khayyam and Rumi”.[3]
Understanding Kiarostami :
A place where poetry or literature is so intimately bound to the hearts of the people must reflect it in their artist’s expression too. Kiarostami, being a poet himself, infuses poetical elements in the narrative intentionally yet so delicately that they are hardly noticed except for the long poetry recitation. Moreover, he uses metaphors and symbols to carry certain meanings for the audience who must try to interpret those later for a fuller understanding. “The Wind Will Carry Us” is replete with such images which demand the active involvement of the audience to decode their meanings just like the images used in a poem because of which Kiarostami’s “The Wind Will Carry Us” is sometimes called a ‘poetic film’ too.
Signs & play for meaning:
Behzad kicks a freely moving turtle upside down in the cemetery for no reason other than getting frustrated with the futile conversations with Mrs Godarzi- their producer, and leave the place making it unable to move. When we see Behzad’s car reaching the plains the turtle places its feet back with a turn and regaining its slow rhythm. Later we see Behzad looking admiringly at a beetle rolling a stone much bigger and heavier than its size in the same place of the cemetery before he rushes to save Yousuf. Earlier to this, the human thigh bone unearthed by Yousuf from the well he is digging is taken by Behzad who while talking over the cell phone keeps it in his car dashboard. Seemingly an insignificant piece of bone later assumes a profound meaning of the transitoriness of life and after death mixing with the soil, when he threw it in the flowing water of the village stream. The bone is carried away by the stream and the camera captures its flowing move down the stream for a while after which the film’s end screen comes up. These three images linger over the minds of the audience who then have to search for the meanings themselves as the director keeps it open for them to interpret by delving into the psyche of Behzad. Although Behzad is first presented as the shrewd modern city dweller only focused on the achievement of his goal who lacks certain humane characters and doesn’t mind befooling the innocent villagers about his purpose of visit, by the end, his character seems to have changed as we see him watching the Beetle’s struggle admiringly and throwing away the bone into the stream to mingle it with the soil again for transformation symbolising a new beginning. Behzad’s washing of his car’s front windscreen may symbolise his new vision- ‘one that is free of all impure motivations and from any utilitarian mentality.’[4] But these are to be interpreted only as the film ends open-endedly for the audience.
The Labyrinthine Village:
The Kurdish people of the undisturbed village in the remotest part of Iran live in perfect harmony with nature in their ancestorial heritage. Their agrarian life is so deeply rooted in nature that the outsider Behzad’s intrusion with the selfish motive doesn’t at all disrupt the harmony of the village. The benevolent village and its people warmly embrace the outsiders who are not able to reciprocate because of their corrupt minds and rootlessness of city life. The director has used the serene visuals of the mountainous village with its labyrinthine roads and the beauty of the wheat fields to bring out the sharp contrast between the two worlds which provide him with a great setting for his story.
Chronicle of a death foretold:
Kiarostami developed the film’s script by taking the idea from a short story written by Mahmud Aydin. “The original idea- a group of people who want to film a report about a funeral ceremony- was not mine… on location, it ended up being completely different from the original…I made the film in my own way, taking into account what I saw and found in the shooting location.” [5] The film which starts with the protagonist’s journey to film a funeral turns out to be an inner psychological journey of the protagonist by end of which he experiences a life-changing epiphany in the company of the village doctor. The film dares to deal with the themes of life and death which is in the control of nature. The old lady’s condition gets better but the young and energetic Yousuf nearly falls in the clutches of death which brings out the transitory nature of human life. The doctor while carrying Behzad on the moped shares his views on death and the life after it saying that this life has to be given preference and expresses his doubt on the promised afterlife. He tells Behzad that one should enjoy this life in this beautiful earth to the fullest while they are alive reciting the lines from Omar Khayyam, in which, the doubtful Behzad also joins later as they move ahead through the narrow road across the field and disappear in the distance :
“They say houris make the gardens of
Paradise delicious,
I say that the juice of the vine is delicious,
Take this cash and reject that credit –
The sound of a distant drum, brother, is sweet.”
The old lady dies in the end but till then the project of filming the funeral is been cancelled by the Tehran office and Behzad’s crewmen also go away from the village leaving him alone. The innocent Farzad already starts avoiding Behzad due to his earlier rude behaviour. The innocent little boy Farzad and the critical Behzad, are presented in such a way that the audience understands that Farzad might become a person like Behzad in the coming years or Behzad once had the innocence of the little boy which he has lost in the fast life of the modern city with strict working schedules where strict deadlines are to be fulfilled. “Behzad is the embodiment of the universal, modern, alienated, anxious and preoccupied man. By introducing alienation in the east, Kiarostami breaks a stereotype of the western world about Iran“.[6]
The Cafe Owner:
Then there is the woman who runs the village cafe representing the other side of the village women, seen elsewhere busy with the household works like washing clothes and taking care of their babies and children as all the men of the village are out there in the fields for harvesting. It is unusual even for Behzad, a man from the city, who says that he hasn’t seen any woman serve tea at a cafe before and the reply that he gets from the cafe owner is a lesson not only for Behzad but for the audience as well. She is a strong woman who is very conscious about her rights and can raise her voice when required. She actively debates with a village man to establish that serving tea is an equally tiresome job like the men’s work in the fields. She is capable enough in exerting her power to drive away the man who tries to park his car in front of her cafe:
Cafe Woman: You choke us when you start it up.
We swallow fumes instead of tea.
Unseen Driver: I park right here.
Cafe Woman: You can’t. You have no right. It’s my café, my territory.
You can’t park your car here.
The couple In Love :
Behzad’s following conversations with Yousuf makes him curious about his furtive love affair with the sixteen-year-old Zeynab who brings milk for her hardworking man.
Behzad: But it wasn’t Farhad who dug Biston.
Yousuf: I know.
Behzad: Who then?
Yousuf: It was love… the love of Shirin!
Behzad: Bravo. You know love too.
Yousuf: A man without love cannot live!
Behzad becomes so occupied with the thoughts of Yousuf’s ladylove that he goes out to find her house in the village and meets her with an excuse of asking for milk which he barely needs. As the audience starts doubting his intentions he is shown asking Farzad what he thinks about him before asking him to bring a bowl to fetch milk:
Behzad: Can you answer me frankly?
Farzad: Yes.
Behzad: Do you think I’m bad?
Farzad: No.
Behzad: Are you sure?
Farzad: Yes.
Behzad: How can you be sure?
Farzad: I know, You’re good.
All these eventually lead us to the long shot taken in the dark underground cellar lighted by a lamp where Zeynab milks the cow for Behzad and he takes the opportunity to recite the poem ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ by Forugh Farrokhzad from which the film has borrowed its title. Behzad even tries to make her understand this poem about love by referring to her love for Yousuf and their meetings at the cemetery.
The absent presence of the poet Forugh Farrokhzad: Here is the full text of the poem –
The Wind Will Carry Us
In my night, so brief, alas
The wind is about to meet the leaves.
My night so brief is filled with devastating anguish
Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows?
There, in the night, something is happening
The moon is red and anxious.
And, clinging to this roof
That could collapse at any moment,
The clouds, like a crowd of mourning women,
Await the birth of the rain.
One second, and then nothing.
Behind this window,
The night trembles
And the earth stops spinning.
Behind this window, a stranger worries about me and you. You in our greenery,
Lay your hands – those burning memories –
On my loving hands.
And entrust your lips, replete with life’s warmth,
To the touch of my loving lips
The wind will carry us!
The wind will carry us!
Born in 1934, Forugh Farrokhzad remains to be one of the most prominent modern poets of Iran who tried to give voice to the patriarchy dominated Iranian women’s dreams and desires. Her poems were sensual enough to touch the reader’s mind and she was also preoccupied with the transitoriness of human existence on earth and therefore preached to live this life with its full vigour and potential and perhaps came closer to the much-celebrated predecessor Omar Khayyam in her philosophy. Forugh’s life was a very short-lived one and she died at the young age of 32, but her life was exceptional in the sense that she could write touching upon the issues of women and love freely and openly, subjects which are kept under repression in the patriarchal society of Iran. She had tried her hand in filmmaking too and made a documentary ‘The House Is Black’ in 1962 on leprosy-affected people of Tabriz. After the shooting of her documentary, she adopted one child of those people showing her sensitive side. Her untimely death in1967 in a car accident is still a controversial subject and though doubt looms around it, her advocacy for the celebration of the present moment seems justified.In an interview, Kiarostami says,“Regarding the poem by Forugh Farrokazad that I used in the film, when I read it this time, it made much more sense to me than it had before. I could see that its philosophy and themes were close to Omar Khayyam’s philosophy of life and death.” [7]
“The Wind Will Carry Us’, like all great works of art, is also a study of life although it seems to be a journey to document death. But life and death are like the two inseparable sides of the same coin. Therefore when Behzad goes to film the funeral he finds himself looking at life and its manifold forms in the mundane lives of the rural inhabitants attuned to the harmony of nature. There he sees a new birth, a new love blooming between a young couple, children playing, cattle grazing around and above all the fertile soil yielding good harvest as a result of earlier hard work, literally everything except his anticipation of the death coming true which he thought to be a certainty before arriving in the village. It is life’s uncertainty that gives a unique character to our being which we fail to see when we live and work in a fixed schedule dominated busy life of the modern cities. Kiarostami, therefore, brings us to this rural retreat of the remotest Tehran among the simple and warm-hearted Kurdish people to look at life by opening our eyes as well as hearts and learn to live this life to one’s full potential until death makes its inevitable visit, sooner or later, which is certain and beyond our control.
References:
- Bert Cardullo, In Search of Cinema – Writings on International Film Art, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.
- Jonathan Rosenbaum & Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Abbas Kiarostami, University of Illinois Press, 2018
- Alberto Elena (Translated from the Spanish by Belinda Coombes), The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, SAQI & Iran Heritage Foundation, London, 2005
[1]Interview with David Sterritt, ‘With Borrowed Eyes: Abbas kiarostami Talks’, p. 25.
[2] This remark comes from a speech titled “An Unfinished Cinema/’ which Kiarostami delivered in Paris in 1995 for the Centenary of Cinema.
[3] ‘Abbas Kiarostami’ Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, p 61
[4]Through a Glass Darkly, Alberto Elena, p. 159
[5]Through a Glass Darkly, Alberto Elena, p. 151
[6] Abbas Kiarostami’ Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, p 68
[7] ‘Interviews with Abbas Kiarostami’ Jonathan Rosenbaum & Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, p.113
