A man drives a big car through a herd of sheep. The man is hollering, "hello, hello" into his ancient mobile phone. The car trudges up a hill. The man steps out of the car and starts talking in the phone with his employer. Everything is wrong. His project is stuck. Gently, he kicks a turtle that happens to walk by. The camera focuses on the turtle. The car drives away. The camera zooms in the turtle again. The turtle starts to abscond from the camera.
This is one of the brilliant scenes from Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, a slightly absurd study of frustration and human encounters. A group of men, we are not sure of their profession, arrive in a village. Something is to be done. The only man we see in-camera, a slightly dour middleaged man, mostly trods along aimlessly in the village, talking to people, asking for milk, asking about the old lady who is rumoured to be dying. Why is he inquiring about the lady all the time? Eventually, it is clear that they are to document a mourning ceremony, if only the woman were to die...
Nothing much happens in the film. We see almost the same scene repeating over and over again, ritualistically. The man drives up the hill, and down the hill again. Make no mistake: Kiarostami does not bore us. His film, one might call it a comedy, is full of life. Of course, I am not a speak of the languages spoken of the film, so should not really say this, but from the contexts, it seems as if language is used very fluidly here, not as a conveyor of information, but as a part of the life people are living, the way the understand one another, or don't.
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