Abbas: The Wind Will Carry Us

As an Abbas's recent film in his poetic and self-critical style, “The wind will carry us” brings us some fresh air. It may take some effort to get into the inner philosophy behind the scenes. A filmmaker and his colleague from Tehran traveled to a remote village secretly to record a local ritual ceremony surrounding an old dying woman, Mrs Malek. The yellow and green montage of Iranian farmlands and mountains is fabulous in the road. A little boy, Farzad, who guided them to the village, became their informant on the fate of the old woman. He is innocent, sweet, and bright. He is a serious student too, got busy in his grade exams. It is obvious that the filmmaker and his colleague were counting on the old woman’s death, and they got more and more impatient as time went by. Walking in woods one day, the boy told the filmmaker that one of his wishes was that he wanted Mrs Malek to get better, what probably embarrassed the filmmaker. For God's seek, the old dying woman indeed got well at the end, making their mission empty. To the filmmaker, is this a failure? This film asks us to ponder on the position and value of film-making, as Abbas did in several other films, such as Close-Up, Through The Olive Tree, and Life And Nothing More. A local doctor gave us some insight later, when he and the hero were riding through the gorgeous farmland, as that shown on the dvd cover. The doctor joked if he was no use to others, at least he made the most of life, that he observed the nature, while he rode around to see his patients everyday. When the hero commented old age was a bad illness, the doctor said death was the worst, “when you close your eyes on this world, this beauty, the wonders of nature, and the generosity of God, it means you’ll never be coming back”. Replying to “the other world is said to be more beautiful”, the doctor recited a poem, in the windy wheat fields:

“They tell me she is as beautiful as a houri from heaven!
Yet I say,
That the juice of the vine is better,
Prefer the present to these fine promise.
Even a drum sounds melodious from afar…
Prefer the present. “

* houri: the virgin companions of the faithful in the Muslim Paradise.

Another young girl is somewhat mysterious. Her brother was digging a well on the top of a hill, who got an accident later. She milked a cow in her dark stockade for the hero’s favor. She is shy, and doesn’t talk much. There is even no chance to see her face and know her name. She accustoms to the darkness in the cow stockade and such a life everyday. While she milked the cow, the hero recited a poem to her, though his motivation is unclear. She was ignorant and indifferent to the poem at all. The poem might be the theme of the whole movie:

“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?
This happiness feels foreign to me,
I am accustomed to despair,
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 you and me.
You, in my 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.”

Nothing more need to be added.