GABBEH *** out of **** A film that is at all times a love story, documentary and metaphor, GABBEH revels in its inarguable claim, "Life is colour, love is colour." The film begins with a gabbeh, a Persian rug unique to the nomadic tribes of southeast Iran, adrift in a running stream. Woven into the patterns of each gabbeh are stories derived from the life of its weaver. When this particular gabbeh is washed, its spirit, that of a young woman named Gabbeh, reveals herself and the story behind its patterns. GABBEH's minor weakness lies in a somewhat threadbare story that remains adrift as fable, never quite human and pressing enough. Her story is teased out by two elderly quarelling lovers whose performances may be charitably described as amateurish. We learn that Gabbeh is the eldest daughter whose marriage to a man on horseback is persistently delayed by her father. Persistent himself, Gabbeh's unrequited lover follows her clan, wailing out to her like the lone wolf, as they travel with their herd from the verdant springtime steppes to the snow-covered mountains, the latter most sublime with its yawning crevasses. The slightness of Gabbeh's tale will indeed seem like a slight flaw when set against the film's visual and other opulences. But no matter, GABBEH functions well at many other levels: as a poetic reiteration that the continued oppression of women does not lend itself to beauty, and as a bittersweet record of the disappearing nomadic way of life. The film works best as a documentary on the creation of a gabbeh and consequently as a metaphor for the creation of art as derived from life and landscape. As we follow Gabbeh and her clan we witness the course of a gabbeh's handiwork, from the shearing of the wool to the mixing of the dyes which will colour it. Particularly joyful is a visit by Gabbeh's uncle to a makeshift school where he instructs the children on colours and how they can be derived from nature. After his hands reach out of the picture frame to the green of the grass, to the red of blossoms or to the yellow of the sun, they return to the frame magically covered by the stuff. Simply, this is visual poetry. GABBEH Directed and written by Mohsen Makhmalbaf Iran, 1996 Review completed on March 1, 1997. |