Current Date:March 29, 2024
A Time for Drunken Horses

Movie 4 d week : A time for drunken horses (2000)

Review by Vinoo
Language : Kurdish
Director : Bahman Ghobadi

The story of young Iranian Turks, five brothers and sisters, the youngest of who, Madi, is ailing. After the death of their father it becomes the responsibility of the kids, lead by the eldest 12-year-old Ayoub, to take care of Madi. Madi, who is physically challenged and is restricted to a height of one feet and pretty much a toddler’s communication skills, needs to undergo a surgery immediately to be able to even survive. To enable this Ayoub has to take up a job wherein he will take a horse with goods, truck tyres that is, across the Iran-Iraq border so he has enough money for the surgery. The route is dangerous and an enemy attack or attack by smugglers can’t be ruled out. Ayoub falls short of money to pay for his goods and his uncle gets his sister married off on te condition that the groom will get Madi treated across the border. All Ayoub wants is for her sister and her husband to take care of Madi, which the in-laws refuse. They give Ayoub a mule as compensation. Ayoub goes out all over again, with Madi this time, and while they are going across the border, with the goods, they get ambushed. The drunken horses refuse to move forward in the snow. Ayoub escapes with Madi across the border in the hope that life has something better in store for them on the other side. Things can’t get worse than they already are. One of my favourite scenes is the  one where tyres are rolling down the slope during the ambush. Here is the climax scene

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Let me warn you, the film is unnecessarily tragic and reminds one of some our own films J but then, this is the first Kurdish film.

Bahman Ghobadi has also made films like ‘Turtles can fly’ which I found a little too melodramatic as also ‘A time for drunken horses’. ‘Life in fog,’ supposedly one of the most famous Iranian shorts, ‘Half moon’, ‘Marooned in Iraq’, etc. Hope to access his ‘No one knows about Persian Cats’ semi-documentary about the underground Indie music in Teheran. Hear some fab reviews of it.

And for those interested in the International Film Festival of Kerala, registrations are open. Last date 30 November 2010. See you there. Here is the link www.iffk.in

Useless trivia : This was the first feature film in Kurdish, a language banned in Iranian schools since 1940, to get an International release. ‘A time for drunken horses’ gets its title from getting the horses drunk to beat the cold when having to go across the border. ‘A time for drunken horses’ is supposed to be a remake of Ghobadi’s own short-film ‘Life in fog’.

NB : There is a move towards privatization of FTII. A research agency has suggested they need to make profits or something to that effect. To put it in our filmi language parlance “Yeh research agency log to saale, maa ko bhi bech denge”. FTII has itself to blame partly for letting things get to this stage but i gather the privatization move has been defeated. Anyways I’d rather let you read and figure for yourselves. Make what you can of it here :

Urgent Petition from the Students’ Body, FTII


http://www.ftiipeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=618
http://www.ftiistudentsbody.blogspot.com/

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