a time for drunken horses
Starring Nezhad Ekhtiar-Dini
and Amaneh Ekhtiar-Dini
Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Opens Friday, March 23
Uptown Screen
In the mountains of Kurdistan, in northern Iran, goods are smuggled into Iraq on horseback, through snowdrifts and unmarked minefields, dodging border patrols. In winter, to keep the horses from freezing, liquor is added to their water, but in careful measure: too much and they may stumble on the narrow mountain paths. Only the coldest and most desperate days are a time for drunken horses.The outstanding Iranian films that have made it to the West in the past 10 years belong to the neo-realist tradition, founded in 1948 by Vittorio de Sica. Like de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, they are all plainly told accounts of the poor facing personal tragedy, acted largely by an unprofessional cast. Apart from the scenery, what makes these films unique is the way they incorporate the conventions of Iranian oral storytelling.
Most obviously, there is the stubborn refusal of closure: every film stops a second before you find out how it’s all going to end – as a result, even the bleakest story, such as this one, can be seen as closing on an upbeat note.
More subtly, there is the frequent intrusion of the teller into the story, which can turn these simple accounts into elaborate meditations on the nature of fiction and representation. In films such as Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees or Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence, this raises docudrama to the highest level of art.
While Bahman Ghobadi has worked closely both with Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf’s better known daughter, Samira (director of The Apple), his feature-length debut is one of the most straightforward of recent Iranian films, told simply and with almost detached calm.
Especially so, considering this story – about three children struggling to earn enough for an operation that will prolong their deformed elder brother’s life after their father is killed by a landmine – is based on personal experience.
Unlike its European cousins in neo-realism (Rosetta, Will it Snow for Christmas?), Iranian films are made in a world where war and earthquakes are (relatively) everyday occurences, and also in a culture which can still assume a natural solidarity between the audience and all the story’s protagonists.
For this reason, although some characters may come off as stubborn or selfish, I have yet to see any Iranian film in which anyone is portrayed as evil, or in which the filmmaker has felt the need for polemics or artifice. I think this also explains why so many of these complex situations are seen through the eyes of children: there’s an underlying (and, I hope, justified) belief that this is how we must approach the world’s wrongs in order best to solve them. |
