Unmistakably Abbas Kiarostami: another winding dusty mountain road, another remote village, another desultory quest. And all the accustomed austerity and rigidity of treatment, too. The "cover" story of the interloper from Tehran (like any Kiarostami protagonist, a total abstainer from smiles and laughter) is that he is on an archaeological treasure hunt. Only gradually does his true purpose become clear: to wait outside death's door for the passing of a hundred-year-old woman so that he may document the barbaric local funeral rites. But this purpose, too, is something of a diversion: what Hitchcock would have called a McGuffin, the thing that sets other, bigger things in motion. They hardly come any bigger than in a Kiarostami film: man's relationship to the world around him, to nature, to his fellow man, to his own soul. Given that the central (or at least recurrent) theme has to do with human contact and connection, it is quite striking, and highly suggestive, how many of the pertinent people are never seen on screen or are seen only fragmentarily: the protagonist's restless "crew," the nagging callers on his cell phone (he must jump into his jeep and drive to higher ground in order to receive their calls), the subterranean ditch-digger at the favored spot for cell-phone reception, the adolescent milkmaid in the cavelike unlit cellar, and, not least, the bed-ridden centenarian: Mrs. McGuffin. Crudely put, the movie relates the commonplace tale of the detached journalist who grows attached to his subject. But Kiarostami never puts anything crudely, always understatedly, unpreachingly, at times with a wry and dry humor. In common with his past sojourns in remote parts, the movie does something that only a movie can do, but that few movies have the patience to do: immerse you in a way of life, a pace, a place, its angles and planes, its textures and tones, its sights and sounds (uncluttered with photographic froufrou and musical meddling), so that the entire experience settles into a presentness, a present tense, instead of forever tugging and straining to get on to the next bit of business, splash of spectacle, tsunami of emotion. If the immersion were any less complete, the message would be reduced to lip service. With Behzad Dourani. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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