From the movie corner of Graziella: The Wind Will Carry Us
This week’s recommendation takes us to Iran and its Kurdish minority, in a poetry laced and intellectually challenging, unusual film. By the time he made The Wind Will Carry Us in 1999, Abbas Kiarostami had quietly become an international art cinema sensation, garnering prize after prize at festivals around the globe. A staunch opponent of the mainstream entertainment that spoon-feeds its spectators, and a firm believer “in a type of cinema that gives greater possibilities and time to its audience,” Kiarostami cast the local people of a remote village in a somewhat cryptic tale of a traditional culture encroached upon by a morbidly curious modernity. The film’s title, The Wind Will Carry Us, is actually the last line of an erotic-spiritual poem, written by the anti-conformist innovator Forough Farrokhzad shortly before her untimely death, and recited (along with other verses) by the film’s anti-protagonist. I can almost hear all the questions crowding your mind as you watch this. And so, nothing better than challenging yourselves this week, and getting to know the uncanny world of Abbas Kiarostami.
