Film reviews: Kiarostami, part 3

The Wind Will Carry Us (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1999). Pregnant with quietly suggested meaning, Kiarostami's masterpiece is a complex comedy of incompatible lifestyles and a fascinating exploration of culture. In a small, gorgeously photographed Iranian village, the rhythms of its inhabitants' daily life are subtly disrupted by visitors (an “engineer” and his assistants) whose vague purpose seems to be abandoned before it becomes clear. Kiarostami punctuates the villagers' interactions with the engineer with poignant passages of poetry both classic and contemporary, sonorous and full of significance in the way only Persian poetry can be. Some critics have (mistakenly) likened the film to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot  since “nothing happens” (a comparison that, I think, betrays a shallow understanding of both Beckett and Kiarostami); perhaps a more helpful analogue would be to the films of Jacques Tati. A.