The Wind Will Carry Us

By RICHARD CORLISS

A city man (Behzad Dourani) comes to an isolated mountain village in Iranian Kurdistan. Why is he there? That is one unsolved mystery in this minimalist spellbinder. But suspense isn't Kiarostami's aim. He is after ordinary rapture, the gentle collision of distant cultures: a schoolboy, Farzad, who befriends the intruder; a girl reciting poetry as she milks a cow in a dark cellar. "Prefer the present!" cries an old man, and this drama, from one of the world's premier film fabulists, makes each moment and movement count. The rhythm of rural life has rarely seemed so lucid and luminous.

--By Richard Corliss