Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf forms a perfect cyclical enclosure in which a Persian carpet begets a dreamlike folk tale that begat the carpet in the first place. The animistic world in which this unfolds is a similar enclosure: the sheep and goats of the nomadic clan, the grasslands around them, the flowers, the grains, all go into the carpet literally as well as figuratively. (It is a magic carpet in the sense of the "magic" of storytelling, the power of conjuring, the ability to transport.) Some of the cultural arcana, some of the personal peculiarities of Makhmalbaf, may be a bit unwelcoming to the wayfaring stranger, but not the voluptuous outward beauty of the thing: striking effects from the parroty and peacocky gaudiness of the women's raiment against the muted tones of the natural landscape; a mesmerizing rippling motif (a creek burbling over the submerged carpet, a flock of sheep in undulating motion over a hillside, a field of tall grass ruffled in the wind); one especially lovely and long-held image of the blowing grass in deep space beyond the horizon line of the tapestry loom in the foreground. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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