GABBEH
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
This is only the second Iranian film I have been privileged to view. The other was the delightful, Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Film , THE WHITE BALLOON. While the latter was a straightforward story of a little girl's adventure as she goes into town to buy a fish for her home aquarium, GABBEH is unlike any other film I have seen. It is a fascinating fairy tale about young love in the steppes of Southeastern Iran where Gabbeh (Shaghayegh Djodat) lives with her nomadic tribe. The tribe was noted for their beautiful carpets.
The film opens with an elderly couple (Hossein Moharami and Roghieh Moharami) on a farm as they discuss who will wash the newly completed carpet which has woven into it, a young girl and her lover. The gabbehs are not mere carpets. The pictures woven tell the stories of their lives, their hopes, Unlike carpets everywhere, the gabbehs do not have a pre-set design but depend on the inspiration of the weaver.
As part of this very imaginative fairy tale, the name Gabbeh is given to the protagonist. Her clothing, like the carpet, is blue. She sits nearby the stream where the old couple is washing the gabbeh and, again fairy-tale- like, we are left to wonder until the film's very end about her relationship with the old man and woman.
The film's story, as sung and related by the young woman, is of the lover from a neighboring clan who rides on horseback atop the mountain ridge and gives forth wolf calls to her, beckoning her to come to him. Her father has promised Gabbeh she can get married after her uncle has gotten married, After that has happened, he tells her to wait until her mother gives birth to a new child.
Unable to abide by these delays any longer, Gabbeh runs away to the mountain where her lover has an extra horse and she and he ride away. When her father learns of this, he takes his rifle and goes after them Two shots ring out and the father returns to tell the tribespeople that he had to kill the couple as a warning to others not to desert the tribe. If you think that is where the story ends, you are, as was I, in for a couple of big surprises which put finishing touches on this lovely film. For something different, something enchanting, you cannot miss with GABBEH,
Mention must be made of the exceptionally fine photography by director of photography Mahmoud Kalari. The wheat fields, the winds that sweep them; the many gabbehs that dry on the landscape are gloriously presented.
Screenplay and direction by Mohsen Makhmalbaf,
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Ben Hoffman
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