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The Wind Will Carry Us and "Traditional Culture"

This was written in respose to a post requesting recommended films dealing with traditional or indigenous cultures.

July 24, 2002

I'd like to recommend Abbas Kiarostami's THE WIND WILL CARRY US for this topic, as it touches on a number of issues that I hope will not be left behind as we discuss and watch these movies about "traditional cultures". Not only does this film depict a traditional culture (in this instance, a remote hill village in northern Iran), but it also depicts the [i]process of depicting[/i] a traditional culture, and raises questions about our participation as viewers to this process of watching and interacting with another culture. I'm sure this sounds confusing so let me summarize the movie before I clarify my point.

The story (if you want to call it that) involves a nameless Iranian man who drives into a remote hillside village with three other men. They make friends with a local boy who helps give them shelter. The man then makes discreet inquiries as to an elderly woman who is dying. Over the course of the rest of the film it becomes apparent that the three men have come for the old woman's death; it seems they have some kind of business-related interest in her death as the man keeps calling back to Tehran on his cell phone. Based on certain bits of information, one could make an educated guess that they are a film crew interested in - ta da! - documenting traditional customs, possibly a bizarre death ritual the village women perform. However, the details are kept out of the picture, which reflects the men's attempts to hide whatever purpose they have in coming out to the boondocks.

While the straight details about the mens' visit are left half-hidden from us, what we do get are a remarkable series of encounters and conversations between the main character and several of the villagers: most notably the boy, a man digging a mysterious ditch, and the ditch digger's girlfriend, who milks cows inside a cave. Interestingly, we never see the last two characters, who stay hidden in their respective ditch and cave even as they make conversation with the man.

Taken as a whole, there really isn't much of a plot to this movie -- instead we have a series of encounters that build up to one man's overall encounter with an unfamiliar community, which has everything to do with our own encounter of this community. Even though the main character is Iranian, he probably has as much in common with us as he does with the Iranian villagers: he drives a nice car, wears blue jeans, carries a cell phone and pretty much acts like he owns the place (not unlike how I've seen most Americans and Europeans behave when travelling abroad). Obviously people treat him differently than they treat themselves, and, with a mix of fear and reverence, they try to present themselves in a way that pleases the man without getting too mixed up in whatever he's up to. What's great about the film is that the man knows this. He is totally aware that his presence is to some degree disrupting the normal operations of the community, which in turn jeopardizes his own chances of accomplishing his goal. The result is that his encounters with the natives have a playfully polite sparring quality, brimming with subtexts and yet just plain delightful to listen to as ordinary beautiful human conversation.

For anyone who's ever been stuck in a strange place, whether in another country or another continent, THE WIND WILL CARRY US offers a resonant experience of trying to find one's bearings and learn about one's surroundings with the help of the locals. THE WIND WILL CARRY US plays out like a game of cultural hide-and-seek, in which the hero and the viewer both must use their resourcefulness to put together the clues of what this community refuses to reveal about itself. As such, it makes most touristy movies that take place in other cultures play like cultural pornography. As in his other films, Kiarostami's aesthetic of an "unfinished cinema" puts the viewer in a position where he/she must take an active part in reading between the lines, filling the gaps and making their own meaning. It may sound like work, but at least it helps that the pieces of the puzzle - a succession of glimpses into genuine people and predicaments - are so pleasurable to play with.

There are actually many films from Iran that raise challenging questions when we talk about how we experience a culture through movies: in addition to Kiarostami I can also recommend Jafar Panahi's THE WHITE BALLOON and especially THE CIRCLE. These movies just go to show that when we make our judgments or observations on another culture, we can't take what we see -- or don't see -- for granted.