Ambiguity has never been a strong point of narrative cinema. For most directors, film is primarily a literal medium, with the goal of re-creating the real world while conveying all of the necessary information to the audience. But what exactly constitutes “necessary information?” The obvious answer is information that’s directly relevant to the story being told, but for most viewers it goes beyond that, encompassing stylistic considerations that are generally made so that audiences don’t feel lost from moment to moment. But is this information strictly necessary to make the film work? Some directors would say no, and foremost among these directors is the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.
Throughout his career, Kiarostami has become a master of ambiguity in filmmaking, withholding supposedly important information from the audience so deftly that after a while one hardly misses it. In his 1990 film Close-Up the sound cuts out at several key points during a recorded dialogue scene, and in his Cannes prizewinner A Taste of Cherry we are never told why the protagonist wants to commit suicide. 2002’s Ten is composed entirely of dialogue scenes that take place inside a car, with the cameras bolted to the dashboard. In all of these films and more besides, Kiarostami leaves out certain story conventions one would normally expect, but at the same time he imparts everything that’s really necessary for the story. It’s a tricky feat, but Kiarostami somehow pulls it off, and his 1999 film The Wind Will Carry Us finds his style of ambiguity at its most poetic.
In the film’s centerpiece scene, Behzad (played by Behzad Dourani) pays a visit to a young woman with the goal of buying some milk from her. When Behzad arrives at the house, the woman’s mother leads him down to the basement, where he finds the woman, named Zeynab, in complete darkness. Soon, she emerges from the darkness with a gas lamp, which she holds down by her side to light the way. He follows Zeynab to the cow’s stall, where she fills his bowl with milk. Never once
do we see her face. But then, do we really need to? If the film was really about her, then we would, but since this is her only scene in the film, so it’s not really necessary. In addition, I believe that by not showing Zeynab’s face, Kiarostami transforms the scene from a fairly standard dialogue into something unforgettable.
In addition, this decision makes perfect sense in terms of the story Kiarostami is telling. Behzad, a filmmaker from Tehran, is an outsider in this small town, finds that the habits and pace of big-city life that he’s grown accustomed to have no place in a rural village. The residents of the village adjusted their lives to their surroundings a long time ago, but Behzad is still an outsider, and he struggles to reconcile his lifestyle with his current circumstances. Perhaps the most famous scenes in the film involve Behzad’s highly irregular mobile phone conversations, which invariably find him asking his callers to hold the line for several minutes while he climbs into his truck and races to higher ground so he can get reception. There are other instances in which Behzad’s expectations are frustrated, and even his reason for visiting the town- to film a strange local funeral tradition- is put on hold while he waits for the woman in question to die.
Throughout the film, Behzad is contrasted with the people of the village, and so it is in his scene with Zeynab. Having already met her boyfriend, he’s eager to meet her as well- “to see what his taste is,” in Behzad’s own words. Yet although she never actually says so, Zeynab’s behavior as she gets some milk for her guest is an attempt to deny him this pleasure. As she milks the cow, the more educated Behzad recites poetry to her and repeatedly asks her her name, but she continues to 
resist his efforts. It’s not that she’s afraid of him, merely that she sees no reason to show herself to him, especially when he could have gotten milk from anyone in town. The scene even finds a perfect punch line when Behzad has left the house, and Zeynab peeks her head around the corner to watch him walking away.
The title The Wind Will Carry Us was taken from the final lines of a poem by the great Iranian poet Foroogh Farrokhzaad, part of which is recited by Behzad during the scene I’ve described. The poem itself is romantic, but taken both in the context of the poem and on its own, the final lines exist as a philosophy for living. Life doesn’t always run according to our personal timeline, nor is it possible for us to always know what we want to know. So sometimes we need to acknowledge this and allow the winds of life to carry us along wherever they want to take us. It’s a philosophy that Behzad would be wise to heed every once in a while, and in Kiarostami’s eyes, so would we all.