Bad Ma Ra Khahad Bord (1999)

Genre: Symbolist
Theme: A rural landscape in Iran
Undercurrent: Contrasts of urban and village living
Language: Persian
Watched it with English subtitles

Behzad Dourani (as Engineer ) is a broadcast journalist and the lead assigned to cover an unusual funeral ceremony in a remote Kurdish village hundreds of miles outside of Tehran. He keeps his identity hidden so as to not appear like a person waiting for death in the community. As the Engineer lives in this remote village, Abbas Kiarostami (the director) takes us through the landscape in a journey that is slow and enchanting. The Engineer moves from his urban life to embrace a shy rural life, that is beautiful and protective of itself. This is symbolically shown in his flirting with the girl while she milks the cow in the dark. This contrast is shown through out and is used in a subtle way to show the vast differences in lifestyles and thinking, which both amazes and endeared me. 

The movie also moves by a first-person narration. The entire story is how the Engineer sees everything. But the director urges us to see the big tree on the side of the road, the curvy lengthy roads and the dry landscape in detail through narration and technique. The director uses unpredictability and mystery everywhere as nothing is certain. The humor comes from the clash of lifestyles, from the unknown and his way of being in a world he is clueless about. The plot is way too simple but the writing sticks strongly to a thriller style suspense over everything - even leaving some questions unanswered at the end because such is the way of life as we see it around us. 

The Engineer has to drive every single time to a cemetery to be able to use his cell phone and connect to his world, that is the city. Every time this happens, he passes over poultry or cattle. Each scene he lives has hills filled with crops, the friendliness of a sensitive village boy, woman bearing her 10th child casually, the fights between a couple who run a tea shop, food being sent over by everyone to the dying woman, women walking to the funeral in large numbers , kicking the tortoise around and so on. We also have the life perspective of a kind doctor which tells us of our inappreciativeness of nature around us and the beauty that we live in, which is exactly what the movie has opened up for all. My favorite scene is the conversation of the Engineer and the Doctor. The superb performance of Behzad Dourani brilliantly portrays the director's view while the rest of the cast is all of village people which can be felt strongly by their shyness in front of the camera which made it feel like a documentary with a thin plot. The movie is like a folk poem where the romance is all in the eyes that see the movie. This is a wonderful narration by subtle story-telling and conveying by symbols which is rarely explored.