This film raised philosophical questioning for me, was this film about mortality (young boy, middle aged engineer, and old dieing woman)?
the nature of life (beautiful scenery, turtle in shell, dung beetle rolling a ball)?
the death of connection through technology (mobile phones, car, camera all seperate the protagonist from excepting the villagers as people much like him, because they bring him back to his city cultural beliefs)?
Or was this film about something else?
Some nice observations. No doubt it was about all these and more. I thought the poem, which supplies the title and that the engineer recites to Miss Zeynab in the dark cellar when she is milking the cow, contains some, if not most, of the film theme though it's not easy to extract. I was struck too by the doctor and what he had to say on living, life and death.
Stranded in a remote village, the engineer is waiting and waiting. He spends his days observing but, unlike the doctor, he is not marvelling at the glorious nature around him. He is absorbed, impatient and thinking of the life around him through a lens. His interactions are slightly formal, he is interrupted by the phone constantly (very comical the way he has to drive some distance for his calls) and takes his irritation out on nature, e.g. kicking over the tortoise. The villagers are really industrious people, even the children with their keenness on studying. The engineer's employment does not make him industrious. He is idle; drinking tea with an elderly man. Listening to a husband and wife arguing where both are describing their labours and all he wants is to take a photo.
The poem is harder to apply and it is so beautiful. It is about passion in a night when the elements are tempestuous but the passion of love secures the poet and they finally believe that the wind will carry them and their loved one. Is this about trust in the process of life? Does the process of life intersect with the doctor who loves the present and views death as illness that closes eyes to the beauty of the natural world?
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer
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