THE WIND WILL CARRY US Blu-ray Review: Poetry in the Hillsides, Cows Underground

A man from the city comes to a rural village. His real reasons for being there, he keeps to himself, while keeping up a friendly yet elusive story to the locals. They, too, are friendly yet elusive. Among misses connections, journeys to find milk and cell phone signals, time stretches on and the man digs deeper for reason and meaning. The Wind Will Carry Us, by celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, has had a 4K restoration and re-issue from the Criterion collection.

Behzad (Behzad Dorani) has come to a small village, several hours' drive from Tehran. He tells the villagers that he's an engineer, and makes some vague small talk about public works for which he and his team must survey. But he keeps asking about an elderly woman who is dying, and he doesn't seem to be actually doing any engineering work. In the meantime, he tries to get to know the villagers, secretly taking photographs, while he takes calls about something taking too long.

The narrative is fairly loose, and I suspect the script was as well. It's a film in which, scene after scene, it feels as if almost nothing happens, yet it is filled with rich moments. It's never not engaging in its character and story (such as that story is), and puts the audience in the position of Behzad as he attempts (and mostly fails) to put himself in the rhythm of this village. This is not to say he is unwelcome, or that he would have no place, but this village has its own way of being that is, if not impenetrable, then simply unknowable without a lifetime of immersion.

As Behzad and his team, in their jeep, make their way down the winding dusty road, it's clear that the indirect path will lead them to the layered village. Literally; the homes are built into the side of a hill, the place is a series of steps and ladders, and as we sometimes watch Behzad run across the smoothed-out stone to get to his car to get to higher ground, it's roofs of people's homes that his feet pound upon. We can imagine that the occupants might learn to recognize their neighbour's steps, or that their equilibrium is tuned differently, walking across floor and roofs, up and down ladders.

How we live in the world shapes our minds, and perhaps this is reflected in the old woman who was once dying and is now somehow in a liminal state. For Behzad, whose real purpose is now delayed, this seemingly normal village occurrence is a burden; he needs to act casual while facing his own small crisis. As he attempts to act at ease in the village, he has a conversation with his hostess while shaving, the mirror acting as camera. We watch him casually asking questions, seeing her existence compared to his temporary residence.

With the little boy who acts as his tour guide and local advisor, there is something of a father-figure relationship that Behzad is trying to adopt, but again, this is not his world, and his constant demands on the boy's time seem to indicate that he is unwilling to understand, while he is welcome (to a certain extent) in this world, his ways are not their ways. The argument at the tea shoppe, when the proprietor (a woman) points how how much she has to work compared to one of her customers (a man), and Bezhad tries to take her picture. No, she won't have it, and still he persists.

While Kiarostami shows the village and its people from Bezhad's subjective perspective (and we could imagine that the character is a stand-in for the filmmaker himself), it makes us understand how the people around him, see him. His team, whom we only see at a distance, seem to spend their time in their room, not interacting (as if they know their presence isn't exactly in tune with their surroundings). Another 'invisible' person is a digger, with whom Bezhad strikes up random conversation while on the hill outside the village, as the digger is working on some kind of trench. We don't see him, though Bezhad does, and they bond a little over their dislike of working with others. Though Bezhad is oblivious to how he invades this working man's space. Indeed, how he is invading everyone's space. He is at once engaged with the people he's interacting with, and frustrated by how the place, and people, just won't conform to his needs.

Within these space, the private and the public are not what he expects. His landlady is pregnant one day, and the next still at her same household work, now carrying the newborn on her back. In one fascinating scene, in Bezhad's search for milk, he's directed to an underground cave, and the young woman (and the cow) therein. We see neither of their faces, but Bazhad questions the woman on her life, her relationship, and frequently asks to see her face. She quietly but steadily refuses, never wavering in her work of milking the cow in this strange, almost otherworldy place and moment.

The mysteries of this village lie underground, under the roofs that the residents walk upon, behind the windows where people can exist in a state of limbo. Some things can be in the open for a person like Bezhad, some secrets must be kept; not even as secrets, just that which cannot be understood unless you are a part of this place. Understanding what the title means, what will happen if you just go with the flow of life in a place that has a cycle of its own. The Wind Will Carry Us takes its rhythm from this place of both perpetual motion and sedate stillness, the möbius strip of life on this endless yet beautiful loop.

Special Features

The 4K restoration (made from the 35mm original camera negative) is to Criterion's usual excellent standard; the gorgeous Iranian landscape, with its yellow fields, sparse trees, and great mountains in the distance, are wonderful to behold. The kind that still looks how it would have when seen originally. not made too crisp, still with its warmth and bit of a feeling of dust in the air.

There is an hour-long inteview with Kiarostami from 2002, where he explains how the story for The Wind Will Carry Us began with the winding road, how its symbolism was the foundation for the film, the process of filming in this small village and how his story mirrored that of the protagonist, what he had to adjust and what he had to keep the same. Coupled with 'A Week with Kiarostami', a 90-minute documentary by Japanese filmmaker Yuji Mohara that follows seven days in the making of the film, and it's a fascinating combination of theory and practice of filmmaking.

It feels fitting that poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar has written the essay for this film; it's a beautiful piece on how the film examines the urban/rural divide, how the protagonist is something of a stand-in for the director, how Kiarostami captures the rhythm of the village and its people, and the poetic relationship of the artist to subject. This pairs very well with the best of the special features, a Criterion-created video essay that includes poetry by the filmmaker himself. Set against images from his films, read in the original Persian by Massoumeh Lahiji, it's a wonderful testament to Kiarostami's two loves.

The Wind Will Carry Us will be release by The Criterion Collection on May 13th.