MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Lee Eisenberg An occasional motif in cinema is the arrival of a person from a big city in a small town. It's gotten played for laughs (My Cousin Vinny) and gotten used for terror (The Birds). But Abbas Kiarostami's "Bād mā rā khāhad bord" ("The Wind Will Carry Us" in English) is probably the first instance where it's been philosophical. The movie focuses on some journalists who go to a Kurdish village to document the rituals anticipating the death of an elderly woman, only to see the woman survive. One of the journalists proceeds to meander through the village, his cell phone remaining the only link to the outside world. It's as though the stay in this village is the first time that he's had a chance to simply experience life.So far I've liked every Kiarostami movie that I've seen, and that includes this one. It's basically a focus on our understanding of life (the urban concept of it vs. the rural concept of it). Abbas Kiarostami, like Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorsese, is someone whose work revolutionized cinema. It's too bad that he died last year (one of the many notable people who left us during the atrocity that was 2016).

adipocea Nothing more to say. Because saying more is spoiling the fantastic delicate texture of this piece of art, of poetry, that stays at the same level with the great poetic cinema of all time. Let's say, nevertheless( because IMDb doesn't allow comments with less than 10 lines), that the beauty of the movie is so great, so relaxing and enriching is visualizing all this gorgeous cinematography that it will make your day. Watch this if you are stressed out, if you have a skin rush, if you feel uneasy. This movie, along with Spring, summer...(Kim Ki Duk) is one of the few movies with therapeutic effect that I know. Iran is such a great country, such a great culture and past they have...A big Bravo!

gnostic21 There should be a club for slow movie lovers, as there is for slow food lovers; those of us who are too old for our visual comprehension to be shaped by MTV style editing. This is one of those movies. It's a meditation on history - this historical difference between the protagonist (the engineer), who lives in a world defined by contemporary speed, but isn't, because he has to get into his car and travel several miles up-hill every time he gets a cell phone call (very funny I thought) and the ageless, timeless lifestyles of the villagers he's studying. My read is that he's doing an ethnological project, trying to record a ancient ceremony of mourning that involves self-mutilation of mourners to prove their allegiance to the deceased, thus protecting their livelihoods, as a symbol of the power politics of a small in-bred community. As Westerners, for whom most of the world that doesn't include McDonalds and KFC is a great smeary blank, the visuals of the landscape, the golden houses, the rabbit-warren quality of the village, the constant presence of pastoralists, are a revelation, in their beauty, and the ancient forms of human life on earth that they evoke. These are the movies I love; the mystery of their meaning and their reminder of what life was like for thousands of years before MTV/ iPods and the Internet is a crucial part of why.

ars291 I am mostly writing this in response to the "still wondering" post. I hope this helps. I don't really know if it counts as a spoiler, but I checked the box for spoiler anyway so that I don't get blacklisted.Anyway, the story is basically about a photographer who has come to a small village in the Kurdistani region of Iran to get photographs of a ceremony that occurs only after a person has died. This ceremony is mentioned and briefly described when one character talks about how his mother has two lines on her face from previous ceremonies. It is a sign of respect to the dead to demonstrate your bereavement by scarring your own skin.The photographer, Behzad, has come to this particular village because there is a sick old woman living there who he thinks will die soon, thus setting the ceremony he wants to photograph in progress. Only problem is, she takes a lot longer to die than he is expecting. Almost every day, it seems, Behzad gets a phone call from his boss, who does not seem happy about how long his project is taking. His crew of three men also are irritated by the length of time they have had to spend in the village.While Behzad himself seems more laid back about having to spend his time in the village, even mingling with the villagers somewhat, he still does not seem to respect their way of life much. Every time he has a phone call, he drives his car over a cemetery to get to high ground where he has better reception. Then, of course, there is the moral dilemma of if it should even be acceptable for him to come in to the village and photograph such a personal ceremony at all.I am still confused about what the ending means, so maybe someone else can explain that farther on here someday.I do have to agree, however, with the other confused viewer (of the "still wondering" post) about the cinematography. It is really a beautiful film.