A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Shooting Gallery Series Director: Bahman Ghobadi Writer: Bahgman Ghobadi Cast: Nazha Ekhtiar-Dini, Amaneh Ektiar-Dini, Madi Ekh Dini, Ayoub Ahmadi Jo Younessi
Iranian movies are often about children, given the regime's preference for G-rated fare, but while "A Time for Drunken Horses" centers on youngsters, Bahman Ghobadi's film is no "White Balloon." This is no fairy tale despite its mystical setting in a rugged, snow-covered area on the Iran-Iraq border but rather a tale about children that could make Oliver Twist look like the prince in Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." These children who live in a large area that embraces Iran, Iraq and Turkey known as Kurdistan have a hardscrabble life, one that robs them of their childhood, turning many into petty smugglers who face the constant threat of Iraqis ambushes, land mines, and abysmal exploitation of their labor. What makes this Shooting Gallery offering a bit of breakthrough cinema is that this is one of the first movies made in the Kurdish language--which is comprehensible via white subtitles which often are blurred out by the snowy background encompassing many of the scenes.
Credit must be given to a man (who is to our knowledge the only known Kurdish filmmaker) to create a story amid difficult weather conditions about people whom he has known all his life--peoples familiar to Americans only as the objects of oppression by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hassan and who are partially protected by an U.N. sponsored no-fly zone which forbids the Iraqi Air Force from flying over Kurdistan. The participants in the film are from the village of Baneh, they are non-actors mostly from the same family, and though they lack the very basics that virtually all westerners possess--electricity and TV for example--they are in the film maker's opinion happy people.
One can understand that this film has been received enthusiastically in the Kurdish regions of Iran and Iraq but for a western audience and even for a non-Kurdish Iranian audience, the reception may not be as sanguine. Limited in plot and repetitious despite its brief seventy-seven minutes' running time, "A Time for Drunken Horses" does evoke the suffering, poverty and boredom of people who as members of a minority group living in remote regions are doubtless the poorest of Iranians. However I found myself unable to feel the heartbreak that Ghobadi would hope for in his non- Kurdish audience because the mostly plotless road movie is loosely structured, fastening almost exclusively on the trek through vast reaches of snow by groups carrying contraband (auto tires and the like, not illegal drugs) over the border to their fellow Kurds living in Iraq where the goods can command a better price.
The principal element of the story is the struggle, sometimes narrated by the twelve-year-old girl Amaneh (Ameneh Ekhtiar-Dini) whose brother Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) has become the young leader of the orphaned family. Ayoub is responsible not only for Amaneh for also for his sister Rojine and for a crippled, deformed and perhaps retarded 15- year-old, Madi (Mehdi Ekhtiar-Dini). Ayoub and his clan are hoping to be paid enough by the heads of the smuggling operation to get his crippled brother an operation that he needs to have within the year to save his life, but the adults who lead the force of mules not only make excuses to avoid payment but feed their animals vodka-laced water to encourage the "horses" to walk in the sub-freezing weather. Predictably enough, the mules get intoxicated and at one point simply lie down on the job, at which point their are futilely whipped by their cruel and desperate masters.
"A Time for Drunken Horses" played at Cannes where it was named co-winner of the Camera d'Or prize and was featured as well at the Toronto Film Festival where Toronto National Post critic Noah Richler found the film "gut- punching" and "heartbreaking." My own reaction, unlike that of the story's mules, is more sober. While Ghobadi's heart is in the right place and the acting perfectly fine considering its non-professional nature, the film simply lacks the punch needed to give the poverty and desperation piercing.
Not Rated. Running time: 77 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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