The Wind Will Carry Us
Encyclopedia
The Wind Will Carry Us is a 1999 Iran
ian film by Abbas Kiarostami
. The title is a reference to a poem written by the famous modern Iranian woman poet Forough Farrokhzad
. In 1999, the movie was nominated for Golden Lion of Venice Film Festival
. It won Grand Special Jury Prize (Silver Lion), FIPRESCI Prize and CinemAvvenire award in this festival. It received numerous other nominations and awards as well.
village to document the locals' mourning rituals anticipating the death of an elderly woman, but she remains alive. The main engineer is forced to slow down and appreciate the lifestyle of the village. He who stayed at the village with great enthusiasm for the burial of the old woman finds nothing interesting in the ceremony at the end.
and Forough Farrokhzad
in the film which are all about the ideas of life
and death
.
wrote "This ambiguous comic masterpiece could be Abbas Kiarostami's greatest film to date; it's undoubtedly his richest and most challenging ... You have to become friends with this movie before it opens up, but then its bounty is endless." He recently put it in his top ten films list of past 50 years too. Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Sean Axmaker wrote "A celebration of the human spirit nothing short of sublime". After seeing the film in the first days of 2000 Michael Atkinson
said "[This is] the best film we'll see this year" and stranded on his word.J. Hoberman
called it a full fledged masterpiece and wrote "It's part of the movie's formal brilliance that, suddenly, during its final 10 minutes, too much seems to be happening. The Wind Will Carry Us is a film about nothing and everything—life, death, the quality of light on dusty hills." After its screening on Venice Film Festival
1999, it remained unreleased in United States till 2000 but ultimately it was to its benefit since it enjoyed a rediscovery on late 00s and was picked by some critics as one of the best films of this decade. Variety's Scott Foundas put it on top of his greatest films of 00s list ahead of movies such as Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris, 1871)
and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood
and wrote "Screened in festivals in 1999, but not released in the U.S. until the following year, this fin de siècle/millennium fable by the great Iranian auteur seemed to anticipate many of the dramatic changes that would sweep through filmmaking over the decade to come. In it, an "engineer" (who turns out to be a kind of filmmaker) travels to a remote Kurdish village with the intent of photographing the funeral rites of a dying 100-year-old woman, and the witty, haunting, poetic film that follows is about his — and Kiarostami's own — struggle to complete that mission, to capture something of real life on film without violating its essence. Kiarostami himself has not worked on film since, preferring the more portable and less invasive technology of video. Call it the first true movie of the digital revolution.".
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian film by Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries...
. The title is a reference to a poem written by the famous modern Iranian woman poet Forough Farrokhzad
Forough Farrokhzad
Forugh Farrokhzād was an Iranian poet and film director. Forugh Farrokhzad is arguably one of Iran's most influential female poets of the twentieth century...
. In 1999, the movie was nominated for Golden Lion of Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
. It won Grand Special Jury Prize (Silver Lion), FIPRESCI Prize and CinemAvvenire award in this festival. It received numerous other nominations and awards as well.
Plot summary
A group of journalists and production engineers arrive in a KurdishKurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
village to document the locals' mourning rituals anticipating the death of an elderly woman, but she remains alive. The main engineer is forced to slow down and appreciate the lifestyle of the village. He who stayed at the village with great enthusiasm for the burial of the old woman finds nothing interesting in the ceremony at the end.
Themes
The Wind Will Carry Us is a poetic interpretation of complex issues such as life and death, modern and traditional and local and global. A traditional village with its old rituals and laid-back life is visited by three strangers whose intentions are mysteriously kept back. A cellphone connects the remote village to an external world which seems to be waiting for the ancient to die. The urbanite visitors interfere into the mundane routines of secluded lives, metaphorically portrayed when the "engineer" enters into a barn to buy milk from a young girl. At times, the local appears to be defenseless and accommodating about the presence of the global, at other, it is clearly disturbed and irritated. The two worlds do not confront each other, however, nor do old and new, rather, these binary oppositions melt in a poetic landscape which shies away from providing answers. There are several references to the poems of Iranian poets like Omar KhayyámOmar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....
and Forough Farrokhzad
Forough Farrokhzad
Forugh Farrokhzād was an Iranian poet and film director. Forugh Farrokhzad is arguably one of Iran's most influential female poets of the twentieth century...
in the film which are all about the ideas of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
and death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
.
Reception
The movie was instantly hailed as a classic and firmed Kiarostami's position as the most acclaimed director amongst the art circles at the end of the millennium. In a hugely positive review Jonathan RosenbaumJonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
wrote "This ambiguous comic masterpiece could be Abbas Kiarostami's greatest film to date; it's undoubtedly his richest and most challenging ... You have to become friends with this movie before it opens up, but then its bounty is endless." He recently put it in his top ten films list of past 50 years too. Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Sean Axmaker wrote "A celebration of the human spirit nothing short of sublime". After seeing the film in the first days of 2000 Michael Atkinson
Michael Atkinson
Michael John Atkinson , an Australian politician, was the South Australian Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Veterans' Affairs, and Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the Rann Labor Government. A day after the 2010 election, he stepped down as Attorney-General and resigned...
said "[This is] the best film we'll see this year" and stranded on his word.J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
called it a full fledged masterpiece and wrote "It's part of the movie's formal brilliance that, suddenly, during its final 10 minutes, too much seems to be happening. The Wind Will Carry Us is a film about nothing and everything—life, death, the quality of light on dusty hills." After its screening on Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
1999, it remained unreleased in United States till 2000 but ultimately it was to its benefit since it enjoyed a rediscovery on late 00s and was picked by some critics as one of the best films of this decade. Variety's Scott Foundas put it on top of his greatest films of 00s list ahead of movies such as Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris, 1871)
La Commune (Paris, 1871)
La Commune is a 2000 historical drama film directed by Peter Watkins about the Paris Commune. It is a historical re-enactment in the style of a documentary, and was shot in just 13 days in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Paris...
and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood is a 2007 drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!. It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and...
and wrote "Screened in festivals in 1999, but not released in the U.S. until the following year, this fin de siècle/millennium fable by the great Iranian auteur seemed to anticipate many of the dramatic changes that would sweep through filmmaking over the decade to come. In it, an "engineer" (who turns out to be a kind of filmmaker) travels to a remote Kurdish village with the intent of photographing the funeral rites of a dying 100-year-old woman, and the witty, haunting, poetic film that follows is about his — and Kiarostami's own — struggle to complete that mission, to capture something of real life on film without violating its essence. Kiarostami himself has not worked on film since, preferring the more portable and less invasive technology of video. Call it the first true movie of the digital revolution.".