A Time For Drunken Horses (2000): Beautiful, Heartbreaking Gem

Wow! This independent Iranian film, only  80 minutes in length totally knocked me out. Put this on your list and see this movie. You’ll thank me.

A Time for Drunken Horses is the first feature film of the Kurdish Iranian writer/director, Bahman Gohbadi.  The movie put Gohbadi on the cinematic map, winning prizes at ten international film festivals, including Cannes; and he is now recognized as one of the region’s greatest directors. He has made four features since then, the most recent of which, No One knows About Persian Cats (2009), will be reviewed in this space in short order. (That picture resulted in Gohbadi’s exile from Iran, and the arrest of several other members of the company. )

Iran has always had a flourishing film industry, although Islamist laws, particularly restrictions having to do with portrayal of women, and, of course, laws criminalizing criticism of the government,  have made certain kinds of films difficult to produce. One way creative filmmakers have tried to sidestep these limitations is to center their stories on the travails of young kids. The director Majid Majidi has excelled at this with many terrific pictures, including  Children of Heaven (2007), The Color of Paradise (1999) and The Song of Sparrows, (2008).

A Time for Drunken Horses is in this tradition, with Ghobadi also nodding to Italian neorealist films, such as Germany: Year Zero (1948) and The Bicycle Thief (1948). Shot in a documentary style, Drunken Horses is about a family of Kurdish children living in Iran, a few kilometers from the Iraqi border. They live in a tiny village situated in a harsh, yet stunningly beautiful, mountainous landscape – lustrously captured by cinematographer,  Saed Nikzat. Mom died some time ago, and early on, the kids learn that Dad, a smuggler (whom we never meet) has been killed at the border. It falls to the eldest son, Ayoub, to hold the family together.  Ayoub is perhaps 12 years old, just a boy really, although in the harsh Kurdistan outback he is expected to “man up” at an early age  – and one of the wonders of this touching film is to watch this boy’s  earnest struggle to shoulder his new responsibilities.

Those responsibilities include providing sustenence for himself and his siblings (an older and a younger sister, and a younger, invalid brother). Early on, Ayoub also learns that his brother Madi’s condition is deteriorating and, unless Madi has an operation he will likely die within a month.  With the operation , he may have another year. Ayoub feels he must raise the money for his brother, and the rest of the film follows his and his sister Rojin's desperate attempts to do that.  Rojin bravely, movingly is prepared to sacrifice herself to aid poor Madi.

The kids playing these characters are Iranian Kurdish kids. Amateurs all, they are brilliantly believable, sincere, and beautiful. The siblings are kind and sweet in their feelings and care for Madi, who needs to take his medicine every few hours, needs to be carried almost everywhere, and gets weekly injections from the regional doctor.  Despite his handicap, Madi is accepted as is. He is family, and he is loved. There are a few adults to lend a little assistance - an uncle, the doctor – but mostly these children are on their own in an unforgiving,  but physically stunning world.

Their world is a primitive place. We see no phones, no TVs, no laptops, no cars to speak of. Smuggling seems to be one of the principal industries, and this is carried out by mule caravans. The caravans are dangerous; there is always the possibility of ambush from the government or from bandits. The weather over the mountain passes is so harsh, the smugglers add alcohol to the mules’ drinking water to make them more tractable.  In one of the movie’s most dramatic moments, the inebriated pack animals panic during an ambush with near disastrous results.

A Time For Drunken Horses gives the viewer a glimpse of real people in a world totally unlike our own. It is not a happy film, but it is a fascinating and compelling one – and very, very human. 

A warning though: this picture will stay with you. (In a good way.)

Available on DVD and Netflix streaming.