| Review: A Time For Drunken Horses | |
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I
really didn't want to see this movie. Like War-is-Hell movies and Drugs-Are-Bad-For-You
movies, another category of film I can do without is Poverty Sucks. Not
to sound too glib about it, this kind of realism usually doesn't reveal much
that is new. We know that war, addiction, and abject misery are not fates we
would want to choose for ourselves, so why do we have to spend time and money
experiencing the suffering of others?
Unless, of course, the director finds a way to make the well-known true and finds something new and worthwhile to tell. In the case of A Time for Drunken Horses, first time filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi succeeds brilliantly.
The story concerns a family of Kurds on the Iran/Iraq border who is coping with the illness of its youngest member, the deformed Madi. Madi needs an operation or he will die within a month. (Mentioned offhand is the fact that even with the operation, Madi is doomed--to me, this is the key to the movie's deeper truths.) Madi's siblings try to find the money for his operation by any means necessary, including smuggling, marriage, and extremely hard physical labor.
The kind of sadness the movie exudes is not everybody's idea of a good time. In fact, there are so many awful elements piled up that it's incredible the whole thing doesn't fall into melodrama right away. As if abject poverty and incurable illness aren't enough, add greed, selfishness, and cruelty, throw in an inhospitable climate and barren landscapes, and top it off with ambushes and landmines, and you have all the ingredients for a tear jerker of epic proportions. But like the smugglers stepping through the landmine-infested border regions, the fledging director avoids all the traps of his material and delivers a film that doesn't leave you bawling but thoroughly disturbed.
Part of the film's power derives from its documentary feel, the proud and convincing amateur actors, and the message at the beginning that informs us that this stuff is real. These are people you don't see on TV, unless there's a war on and they appear on the news as statistics or extras huddled together somewhere to receive some aid (like the Kurds were at the end of the Gulf War). These are people who don't worry about whether or not they'll manage to get their hands on one of those elusive Playstations 2 in time for Christmas. Instead, they are arrested at border checkpoints for smuggling exercise books for their children. Not textbooks, mind you: exercise books. The blank kind used for math problems.
But that's not why I recommend the film. Truth isn't enough: what makes A Time for Drunken Horses such a must-see film is not its powerful authenticity, but the fact that it's the most emotionally engaging film I've seen all year. I was hooked from the first minute, and despite the awful topic, there are many pleasures in this film. The proud humanity of the characters, their matter-of-fact acceptance of their awful lot, whether they're trudging through knee-deep snow or huddling on the floor of their huts. The sight of the doomed dwarf dangling from the back of a packing horse in a sack while the sister was being led away to her new husband is one of the most jaw-dropping images in recent memory.
There's another movie in theaters right now in which people fight against the overpowering forces of nature: Vertical Limit, and by all accounts people are flocking to this emotionally empty exercise in action-adventure. I wish somebody would take a cue from the guy who replaced Barbie's voice box with G.I. Joe's a few years back and switch reels on unsuspecting audiences across the country. A Time for Drunken Horses deserves to be seen, and seen again, by as many people as possible. Let's hope the Shooting Gallery will succeed in bringing this film to the remotest multiplex.
Produced, written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi; in Kurdish and Farsi, with English subtitles. Released by the Shooting Gallery. Running time: 77 minutes. This film is not rated
With Ayoub Ahmadi (Ayoub), Rojine Younessi (Rojine), Amaneh Ekhtiar-Dini (Amaneh) and Mehdi Ekhtiar-Dini (Madi).What others have to say:
The Chicago International Film Festival
"Following his own path with straightforward, but eloquent storytelling, Ghobadi establishes himself as a filmmaker to watch with this unsentimental, profoundly moving film."Hollywood Reporter
"Ghobadi tells the tale of hardship without stooping to melodrama. There is no need to do so; his matter-of-fact depiction of the tenuous existence in this hardscrabble country underlines the harshness of everyday life."New York Times
"Because of its relentlessness, its crawling pace (the 77 minutes pass like 2 1/2 hours) and its sometimes confusing story, "A Time for Drunken Horses" may not be for every taste, but it's still an affecting, and in its way beautiful, movie."
