Gabbeh (DVD)
APPROX. 75 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1996 - MPA RATING: NR
" My words cannot fully do justice to the pictures. Dare I say that you will simply have to see it for yourself?
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When I reviewed "A Moment of Innocence," I wrote that Mohsen Makhmalbaf "seems to don a different hat with each new project." "Gabbeh" (1996) provides another example of Makhmalbaf´s seemingly infinite adaptability as the director transforms a project which began, at least nominally, as a documentary into a colorful tale of magical realism.
A gabbeh is a hand-knotted carpet, thicker and somewhat less ornate than most Persian rugs, usually woven by the women from nomadic tribes in Iran and neighboring countries. At the start of the film, an old man (and I mean old!) and old woman take their gabbeh to the spring to clean it. When the gabbeh is laid out on the ground, a young woman materializes on it, like a ghost. Her name is also Gabbeh, and she shares her life story with the elderly couple.
Gabbeh is from the Ghashghai tribe of southern Iran. She is in love with a handsome young horseman from another tribe, but her father forbids her to marry until her much older uncle finds a bride (the old couples´ gabbeh has a small picture of a man and woman riding a horse; obviously, Gabbeh is telling the story depicted on the rug). The uncle returns home from the big city, and spends his time teaching the children and searching for the woman of his dreams – literally. He dreams of a woman by a spring who sings a beautiful song, and he and the rest of the tribe stop by every spring to help him find a wife. Eventually, he does, but even then Gabbeh´s father will not make good on his promise; she must stay to tend to her mother and her family, forever cut off from her lover who always rides alongside the tribe, just out of sight.
The story is quite simple, but the film is deceptively complex. Makhmalbaf uses creative and disorienting editing to imbue the film with a sense of mystery and ambiguity. The film cuts back and forth from the river where Gabbeh speaks to the old couple, and the past events she recounts. Makhmalbaf plays with space and time. When a character looks off-screen we don´t know if he or she is looking at something in the present or the past.
Likewise, we never figure out exactly what or who Gabbeh is; is she real or not? In one scene, the old woman places her arms on Gabbeh for support, but we never see her, in a longer shot, we see the woman stretching her hands out into empty space. So Gabbeh is just a figment of her imagination or a ghost, right? Not so fast. In still another long shot, the old woman and Gabbeh stand together in the water as they fill a canteen. If you squint at the movie in a certain way, you might even come to the conclusion that Gabbeh is a memory, that she is the old woman in her youth which explains why the old man is so clearly smitten with the young lady.
"Gabbeh" is a breathtakingly beautiful movie, even more ravishing to the eye than Makhmalbaf´s lovely film "The Silence." Gabbehs (the rugs, not the character) are known for their bright colors, and the film features eye-popping reds, blues, yellows and even blacks. Color becomes an obvious central metaphor for the film. In the film´s most memorable scene, the uncle lectures a group of schoolchildren about color. He points to the sky and asks them what color it is. "Blue!" they scream, and when he pulls his hand back down, it is coated in blue paint. Then he pulls in handfuls of yellow and red flowers seemingly out of thin air as he continues his lesson. Later in the film, the script is even more direct. As the women weave different colored cloths into their gabbehs, they speak: "Love is color! Man is color! Woman is color!" My words cannot fully do justice to the pictures. Dare I say that you will simply have to see it for yourself?
