In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
As the United States continues to wage an undeclared war on Iran, my thoughts are split between empathy for the people living there and despair at the fact that I, an American taxpayer of over 50 years standing, am paying for this aggression. Not much I can do about that in practical terms, but as a film critic one thing I can do is draw attention to the amazing cinema culture of the country currently being destroyed. That matters because a typical move in wars of aggression is to claim that there’s nothing worth saving in the victimized country anyway, and that is surely not the case in Iran (or anywhere else, and people’s lives are always worth saving, but let’s keep to the subject at hand).
Persian film dates back to 1900, but the modern era of Iranian films begins with the New Wave in the 1960s. Abbas Kiarostami began making films in 1970s and came to international recognition in the 1980s through films like Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987; it won the Bronze Leopard at the 1989 Locarno Festival) and A Taste of Cherry (1997; it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year). The Wind Will Carry Us may be less famous in the United States but it’s just as good and won the Silver Lion at Venice as well as the FIPRESCI Prize in 1999.
There’s a saying among fiction writers that there are only two types of stories: someone leaves home on a journey or a stranger comes to town (I have it in my head that Stephen King said something like that but I can’t find the quote). I think the point is that interesting stories happen when something changes, and in the case of The Wind Will Carry Us what changes is that a man from Tehran (Behzad Dorani) and several other men who are heard but never seen travel to a remote village in Kurdish Iran (the film was shot in Siah Dareh). There’s something mysterious going on—the central character is referred to as an “engineer” but doesn’t do anything remotely related to engineering—and it ultimate becomes clear that he’s there to document mourning traditions but doesn’t want the villagers to know, presumably because it could change their behavior.
Kiarostami’s style owes more to Italian Neorealism than the French New Wave and one of the greatest pleasure of watching his films is the views they offer of ordinary people leaving ordinary lives in Iran, far away from the centers of power and commerce. The main character spends much of his early time in the film trying to get a signal for his cell phone, which requires climbing on rooftops or driving in his station wagon to higher ground. Meanwhile, the villagers (mostly nonprofessional actors) go on about their calm lives, which he gradually comes to appreciate.
The running time of nearly two hours does not feel oppressive, because this is such an immersive film, Kiarostami always gives you something interesting to look at, and unexpected things keep happening to our fish out of water. There are also moments of sly humor, as when he remarks to an elderly woman running a café that he’s never seen a female server before. Unimpressed, she asks him who served tea to his father—the answer of course being his mother, who was undoubtedly a woman. Ah, but he didn’t think of running a household as doing work (neither does modern economics, unless the housekeeper is paid), and he just got a lesson on the unpaid labor that keeps the world running but doesn’t really “count.” | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1261
Technical details: 118 min.; color; screen ratio 1.85:1; Persian.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray (1 disc).
Extras: feature-length documentary A Week with Kiarostami by Yuji Mohara; 2002 interview with Kiarostami; 2025 visual essay about Kiarostami’s poetry, read by Massoumeh Lahidji; trailer; illustrated booklet with essay by poet Kaveh Akbar.
Fun Fact: The title of The Wind Will Carry Us comes from a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, who was noted for his progressive and feminist ideas before dying in an automobile crash at age 32.
Parting Thought: When you don’t know the names of the characters, and most or all of the actors are unfamiliar, it’s harder to write a review or even to discuss a film. Would Iranian films gain more of a popular audience (since critics already know they’re good) if there were some kind of visual guide to actors that would make it easier to figure out who was who, or is it better to separate the sheep from the goats by leaving things as they are?
